The media has declared Governor Michael Pence the winner in the debate between him and Senator Tim Kaine.
The diagnosis is that Senator Kaine was uncharacteristically animate; border line rude to the debate moderator – female and foreign – and was over prepared and under-poised.
For those of us following this Campaign and are still recovering from the fact that Donald Trump has successfully bruised his way to the level of Nominee of the Grand Old Party – GOP – we are hardly surprised that this is their take on the Kaine performance – one that brought substance to the table and exposed Pence for his political hypocrisy.
It’s not that we are alarmists but the apparent resignation of the conservative core of the Republican Party to accepting the coronation of Trump as Party Leader and the face of their Conservative principles has an ominous undercurrent to it.
We watched as the primary process became a killing field for career politicians unfamiliar with the social savagery that had molded Trump’s ambitions; watched as they lowered their Intelligent Quotients to battle Trump on his turf, then watched as this political pirate took them hostage with a toxic combination of narcissism and grandiosity – too powerful for their high functioning minds to grapple with.
With political clumsiness, careerism, chicanery, with unsavory eloquence and a bluster that was neither becoming nor compelling, Trump managed to topple the top of the Republican card by embodying a level of unlearnedness and glamorizing a type of boorishness that would repulse those who understand that, at the international table, a leader has to be diametrically opposite to these traits.
So, it started with those who didn’t understand these salient elements and the ‘movement’, that Vice Presidential Candidate Pence Touts with the all the emotion and facial contortions of dispelling bowel waste, was formed.
What is never underscored is that the other contenders, the ones who were career politicians, who had experience in public service and intellectual capacities that qualified them to aspire to country and world leadership, did not lose the primary. They fell victim to an avalanche of ignorance from a cajoler who chose to substitute the protocol of decency that attends leadership with a calibrated slew of invectives and a dexterity that spotlighted his lumpen intellect.
And all this happened as the core of the Grand Old Party – the Conservatives who tout right to life and prayer in public places, select refugee intake and higher pay for men, staunch adversaries to universal health care and firm allies of the mechanism that triggered the national mortgage collapse – shook their heads with strange bewilderment and took updates from Reince Priebus, Party Chair, who was unable to contain the contortionist Trump who adopted any position to pretend that he has the capacity to be the change agent his followers are seeking.
The reality is, the millions who became Trumpians were seeking political change. Trump, the ambitious narcissist, quickly learned that being comparatively hooligan, co-opting slang and colorful language into his speeches guaranteed that he would win bigly with this group that felt the Party they supported was too stuck on principles that never quite included them. He talked jobs to people who lost their factory employment because people like Trump exported his manufacturing business to countries that offer cheaper labor. He talked production to people who saw their industries leave for countries that provided cheaper product because people like Trump buys cheaper product from these countries to build his “magnificent structures”. He talked opportunity to people who lost opportunity to groups employed by people like Trump who used immigrant labor to retain higher profit margins.
And he did what most of the Grand Old Party doesn’t do openly. He talked bigotry in uncoded language. He made reference to “the blacks’, chastised “the gays” and filed other ethnicities into disparaging social brackets.
And he championed that thing that caused so much Conservative angst. He challenged the legitimacy of President Obama and saluted himself for forcing him to “produce” his birth certificate… a humiliation that the President allowed for reasons we don’t understand but accept.
So, Trump racist and demagogic, emerged as what the majority Republican supporters wanted forcing every other Republican to fall in line behind him, the Pied Piper of GOP politics, pulling the rats and the people into his strident march to some political Utopia that he has now incorporated Pence to help him figure out.
Now, Pence and Trump are indeed strange bedfellows because Pence has a verifiable solid history of conservative politicking and public service. He really believes that a woman has no right to chose an abortion or the right to get the same pay as a man with equal qualifications. He feels that his faith should be the guidepost to his secular decision making and though his bible says to love all equally, he is willing to refuse Syrians refuge because they may be killer Muslims. He has been a man of one wife and one political ideology and has stayed steadfast to his ideological prejudices; never trading them for more political inclusion.
But in spite of all this, he is human and suffers from that affliction of vaulting ambitions. Yes, he has been a good Conservative but has never quite gotten to the top of his Party, in spite of decades of compliance. So, when this Trump, this perversion of Conservative principles, offered him an opportunity to vault even higher, he seized the chance to become what he seemingly couldn’t on his own dedicated, committed, strength.
Now, we are not conspiracy theorists but we will be very remiss to think that the Republican Political machine sat by ringing its hands as Trump marauded through its candidates and ended up with the prize. Indeed, they were caught flat footed because, Trump, the buffoon and anathema that he is to politics, was never considered anything but those things.
But he did what they had never done. He spotlighted the rancor that the more suave politicians pretended doesn’t exist; a grimy mix of racism and fear and dissatisfaction, all blended together with a healthy dose of programmed thinking and pre-packaged thoughts. He showed more attention to this group of voters because they were millions and ready for the revolution that would turn the clock back on legislation that made too many too equal and too comfortable at the expense of too many Caucasians. He forked his tongue and espoused positions that he changed in real time. He talked guns and walls, punctuating his politically inciting statements with ethnic branding. He decimated party orthodoxy and trod on all of its holy grail, reassuring those who saw him as change agent, this atypical faction, that they were actually the belly of the GOP and that, like him, they would no longer be followers or bystanders but leaders.
He was going after government status quo and would get crooked Hillary Clinton for murdering brave Americans in Bhengazi.
….Lock her up!!!
The deal was sealed.
The Trump movement was born.
Rivals endorsed him and the Party Secretary called for all Republicans to line up behind Trump.
But we’re a little reticent.
We’re not conspiracy theorists but we just can’t see Dick Cheney lining up behind Trump. The Bush’s have already said that they won’t, with George Herbert Walker Bush declaring support for Hilary Clinton and we are pretty certain that real multi billionaires like the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and Foster Freiss will be more than skeptical about his membership in the billionaire’s club when they consider that the accounting records released show that he is comparatively insolvent and has not paid his fair share in to expanding the military he accuses others of abandoning.
The core of the Republican Party has undoubtedly calculated its regroup. It wasn’t Trump’s genius that picked dyed- in -the wool Conservative Pence to be his running mate. It wasn’t his moral compass that made him drop Newt Gingrich, Rudolph Giuliani from his short list. Combined with Trump’s marriages these three have at least nine marriages amongst them and very salacious episodes of infidelity. The core of the GOP wouldn’t have that. And they wouldn’t have Chris Christie either because he is embroiled in allegations of colluding with others to use a public thoroughfare to exact revenge on a Mayor who did not support him for governor.
They’ve conceded that they missed the swath of people who blend Isis with brown and black people and border walls. They realize now that there are millions who identify with their party but prefer their politics peppered with berations and expletives, studded with hyperbole and innuendo, chorused with jibes and jeers. They have no taste for the scripted, cogent civil discourse that is first vetted by the Party Chairman before being delivered.
There are a few very salient constants here. The core members of the Republican Party consider themselves the curators of a system of values that can be described as the party’s operating system. They profess strong family values, strong Christian faith. Trump, by demonstration falls well short of those marks. He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, impose tariffs that restrict free trade, and increase the tax burden on American corporations. That’s a Conservative anomaly. Prior to assuming Conservative posture Trump supported the ban on assault weapons – another contradiction to the Conservative platform. He contravenes his stance on immigration and deportation by using this targeted demographic for the construction of his buildings. And, his pledges to reverse Supreme Court decisions that will please the Evangelical population – many of which he supported before declaring himself Conservative- is just another instance of him prostituting for votes.
In the boiler room right now, the hard-nosed Conservatives are putting the final touches to their plan. Mike Pence, the pious looking Evangelical Conservative with his years of commendable public service and his unwavering Conservative positions is a man who has never been described as vile or misogynistic. He has never been accused of filing multiple bankruptcies at the risk of hundreds of employees losing their jobs, refusing to pay contractors upon the completion of contracts, using loopholes to evade taxes. He has never been accused of grappling and groping women to satisfy a sick, lurid compulsion.
He is a malleable loyal Conservative who sacrifices his evangelical faith to defend the shame that is Donald Trump. When he lies about Donald Trump’s record, it is more to protect his party than it is to protect Trump.
The core of the Republican Party is working out the mechanics of how to dump Trump. There can be legal ramifications if the Republican National Committee removes Trump or asks him to step down, given that he won the nomination. They are poring over the verbiage of the law that seems to be in his favor.
There are lots of hypotheticals to sift through because this is the first time in the history of the Republican Party that a candidate has been proven to be so unfit for nomination after he has been nominated and, by extension, so unbefitting for the office of President of the United States of America and the leader of the free world, should he win.
A couple of things are certain.
The Republican Party is more dedicated to restoring its image than it is to shoring up Trump.
People are trying to figure out how to ‘un-nominate’ this encumbrance of a candidate.
And while all of this is going on, yond Pence maintains his lean and hungry look…
as the shards shoring up the indelibly stained character of this deviant who should never hold public office fall off, one chunk at a time.