Bob Green wrote: ↑October 2nd, 2020, 7:50 pm
Never-Trump Conservatives will vote for Pence. I personally guarantee it.
I think this is true, but I’d add the word “some.” Maybe even concede “many.” Maybe. But not “all.” So we’d wind up guessing the percentage.
Pence “looks” presidential. He carries himself in a way that many Americans like, partly, as is not incidentally the case with Biden, too, as a counterpoint to the boorish Trump. But Pence’s fastidious deportment leads some conservatives to see his carriage as an “empty suit.” His reëlection campaign in Indiana in 2016, especially his promotion of an extreme anti-abortion bill in the phony name of “religious freedom,” was not going smoothly. His bill was strongly opposed by centrist conservatives, the very kinds we are discussing right here. So fierce was the backlash, in fact, that Pence was forced to revise it to make it acceptable to those centrists. Political commentators on the ground in Indiana thought Pence would probably lose his bid to retain the governorship. Trump plucked him from that shocking prospect, and political obscurity, precisely because Pence had become a hero to white evangelicals. Pence got very lucky. Maybe he’ll luck his way to the Presidency, á la Harry Truman.
Many actual conservatives understand that Pence has not been fully his own man these last 3+ years, but he has been so often an embarrassing Trump-enabler that some principled conservatives won’t easily forgive his toadying. I do wonder whether video evidence of Pence’s regular and reliably pompous nonsense about Trump’s Presidential “greatness, wisdom, and steady leadership” can and will be ignored, for it has become patently obvious that Trump has been in no sense great, wise, steady, or a leader. He has been a World Historical Mistake, to principled Americans of all political persuasions.
Pence himself is neither a traitor, sociopath, pathological liar, narcissist, lifelong business cheat, nor serial sexual predator, so his own character will certainly not remind anyone of his despicable boss. Yet Pence has not shown courage, either; quite the opposite, in the face of overwhelming evidence of authoritarian cultism, Pence has “gone along,” repeatedly looking the other way, averting his conscience as well as his eyes, thereby helping a fascist to threaten our constitutional democratic republic. Maybe Pence’s abject failure of conscience and principle has been mostly a matter of sins of omission rather than commission. In either case, the onset of our fascist moment has occasioned no resistance from the current Vice-President.
As VP, Pence has betrayed principled conservatism, not to mention American democracy. But I don’t expect all principled conservatives will agree. Just some.
