Having staked his campaign on rally angry whites who are terrified of losing their white privilege and/or the ability to inflict their right wing religious beliefs on all Americans, Donald Trump has cynically picked Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Other than experience in Congress where he voted for some things Trump claims to oppose, the only real value Pence brings is the fact that he is a white Christofascist's dream candidate given his stand on abortion which he would outlaw in all cases and his animus towards the LGBT community. The New York Times looks at Pence's selection in a main editorial. Here are excerpts:
The suspicions that Mr. Trump stirs among evangelicals made Mr. Pence, who was one of the most socially conservative members of the House in his six terms there, the most strategic pick among the uninspiring politicians on Mr. Trump’s shortlist. He is a better bet than the thrice-married, ethically compromised Newt Gingrich, or the unpopular, politically damaged Chris Christie. Unassuming and affable — until his Twitter account exploded with Hillary Clinton attacks this week — Mr. Pence knows how Washington works. And unlike the talkative and bewildering Sarah Palin, who never made it to the shortlist or to the convention speaker lineup, he won’t hog the spotlight or embarrass the boss.
Above all, Mr. Trump’s choice of Mr. Pence is a gesture to Republicans whose money he needs to win, and a move to pacify any conservatives who were scheming to derail his nomination at the convention until they were thwarted by party officials this week. But having the Indiana governor on the ticket does little to convince a struggling middle class that Mr. Trump aims to force the party into its corner.
Mr. Trump does not offer any real policies for creating jobs, and he has been faulted for his treatment of his own employees, but he does at least talk about the pain people are feeling. That’s more than can be said for Mr. Pence. Take the Carrier heating equipment factory in Mr. Pence’s own state. When it announced this year that it would move to Mexico and cut 1,400 Indiana jobs, Mr. Trump predicted that if he were president, Carrier would call “within 24 hours,” to say, “‘Sir, we’ve decided to stay in the United States.’”
What was Mr. Pence doing while workers in his state were worrying about their futures? He and the State Legislature were busy waging battle against same-sex marriage and passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, seen as a means for businesses to deny services to same-sex couples. The law was amended within days, after a national uproar and a corporate boycott that tourism officials estimated cost Indiana’s economy at least $60 million in lost convention business.
While in Congress, Mr. Pence endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade pacts that Mr. Trump rails about. He voted for the Iraq war, which Mr. Trump says he opposed. A staunch anti-abortion conservative, in 2011 Mr. Pence led House Republicans’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, which helped convince many Americans that Congress would rather engage in partisan brinkmanship than work on solving the country’s problems.
A poll last week found that only 12 percent of voters said Mr. Pence’s name on the ticket would make them more likely to cast a ballot for Mr. Trump. Among Republican voters 22 percent said it would.
For Mr. Pence’s audition in Indianapolis this week, he made a speech introducing Mr. Trump as a man who has “never forgotten or forsaken the people who work with their hands.” That’s surprising, since Mr. Trump’s record of forsaking working people is rather long. With Mr. Pence on the ticket, it gets only longer.
As for the Trump/Pence logo, some are having a field day about it standing for toilet paper and insinuated other hysterical things about the insertion of the "T" into the "P."
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