Republicans in Disarray!

Leopards, faces, things of that nature. https://t.co/RfSV9NNFX6

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 5, 2023

It is a fact universally acknowledged — possibly even by Mrs. Pence — that TFG’s handlers picked ‘Mike Dense’ as their VP candidate because he was too dumb to question any shifty behavior, or to get ideas about trying his own little grifts. This character trait inadvertently served Pence well during the Jan6 insurrection; when surrounded by his Secret Service agents hustling him away from a mob literally calling for his murder, Pence retreated to repeating the rules he’d so painstakingly memorized. He became, for a brief shining moment, the hero we needed, if not the hero we wanted.

Nothing that has happened since that memorable day has been able to shift Pence’s stance, because stupid is also usually stubborn. He knows that he was rewarded for keeping his oath on January 6th; he retains a bedrock certainty that only a Republican should be allowed to be President. Ergo, the previous Repub President having failed a test so simple even Mike Pence could pass it, surely the Official Presidential Backup — Mike Pence — should be rewarded with the 2024 nomination. How can these misguided voters fail to understand what is so clear to Mike Pence?

Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “Pence Is Finally Embracing His Role As January 6 Spoiler”:

… [Pence] has sought to take partial credit for the alleged accomplishments of the Trump-Pence administration without much discussing its bizarre culmination on January 6. The video with which he launched his candidacy in June did not so much as mention the Capitol riot or even Trump, for that matter. It’s rather like a Hall of Fame player writing an autobiography that doesn’t mention baseball. But since well before his formal announcement, Pence has trudged along the campaign trail earnestly trying to recapture his pre-Trump persona as an extremely orthodox conservative pol with a particularly close relationship to the Christian right.

Unfortunately for the would-be president from Indiana, the MAGA faithful did not for a moment forget his “betrayal” of Trump on January 6, and in the early stages of the 2024 contest, Pence has been in the unenviable position of being both universally known and heartily disliked among Republican voters. A recent New York Times–Siena national survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents showed Pence with a favorability ratio of 40 percent favorable to 45 percent unfavorable (by contrast, Trump’s ratio is 75 percent to 21 percent). The same poll showed Pence as the preferred candidate of just 3 percent of GOP voters. And a just-released Times-Siena poll of Iowa, where you’d think Pence would find succor in the state’s large conservative Evangelical population, gave him just 3 percent there as well…

So now this strikingly unsuccessful presidential candidate — who is struggling to join the seven rivals who have already qualified for the first GOP debate later this month — has become one of the stars of the MAGA-despised law-enforcement effort to put Donald Trump behind bars…

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Monday Evening Open Thread: When Stubborn Stupidity Is Its Own DefensePost + Comments (113)