Trump is Now Questioning Pence's Loyalty

The New York Times is reporting that the ever more paranoid Donald Trump is now questioning Mike Pence's loyalty.  For once, Trump's paranoia might be well placed.  Pence accepted Trump's invitation for the VP slot for two reasons: (i) it allowed him to avoid running for re-election as governor of Indiana and likely losing, and (ii) it furthered his obsession/delusion that god had plans for him to one day be president. Trump in turn wanted Pence to solidify support among white evangelicals to whom Trump was promising the moon.  It was an arrangement of convenience and with evangelicals having sold their souls and rejected any semblance of Christian values and rallied to Trump's standard, Trump no longer needs Pence and probably rightly suspects the hypocrisy filled, self-promoting  Pence wants Trump driven from office so he can conveniently step into the position he has long coveted and would be only too willing to stab Trump in the back. These two foul individuals deserve each other.  Here are article excerpts: 

Trump’s post-midterm election news conference at the White House last week took a surprising turn when a reporter asked about locking down his 2020 ticket.

“Mike, will you be my running mate?” Mr. Trump asked Vice President Pence, who stood up, raised his hand, and nodded.

“Will you? Thank you. O.K., good,” the president said. “That was unexpected, but I feel very fine.”

But in private Mr. Trump is apparently not feeling so fine. In recent weeks, with his electoral prospects two years from now much on his mind, Mr. Trump has focused on the person who has most publicly tethered his fortunes to him. In one conversation after another he has asked aides and advisers a pointed question: Is Mike Pence loyal?

Mr. Trump has repeated the question so many times that he has alarmed some of his advisers. The president has not openly suggested dropping Mr. Pence from the ticket and picking another running mate, but the advisers say those kinds of questions usually indicate that he has grown irritated with someone.

[S]ome Trump advisers, primarily outside the White House, have suggested to him that while Mr. Pence remains loyal, he may have used up his utility. These advisers argue that Mr. Trump has forged his own relationship with evangelical voters, and that what he might benefit from more is a running mate who could help him with female voters, who disapprove of him in large numbers.

Others close to the president believe that asking about Mr. Pence’s loyalty is a proxy for asking about whether the vice president’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, is trustworthy.

Trump has never completely forgotten that during the 2016 campaign Mr. Pence issued a disapproving statement the day after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was made public, on which the president was heard making comments boasting about grabbing women’s genitals. Trump has kept close counsel about whether he is seriously considering making a change to the ticket, or simply poll-testing advisers as the campaign begins. And few advisers believe he would really go through with it. In recent weeks, Mr. Pence has stepped into public frays to defend the president, saying that “everyone has their own style” when asked if Mr. Trump’s fiery political and personal language have led to violent acts, including the mass shooting at a Jewish synagogue and bomb threats mailed to prominent Democratic figures. Some of Mr. Trump’s outside advisers have mentioned Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, a post she plans to leave at the end of the year, and former governor of South Carolina, as a potential running mate. Ms. Haley is close with Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Mr. Trump gave her an unusually warm send-off in the Oval Office when she announced she was leaving the United Nations job in September.

And Ms. Haley on the ticket might help Mr. Trump win back the support of women, who voted for Democratic candidates in large numbers in the midterm elections.

But Ms. Haley is less likely to show the same kind of public loyalty as Mr. Pence, a former congressman and governor of Indiana. She recently poked fun at Mr. Trump in a speech at the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York City, where politicians historically make jokes at the expense of themselves and their supporters. And that was after her original speech was toned down, and some of the barbs at Mr. Trump removed, people familiar with the address said.

Trump and Pence are both despicable.  One can only hope that they BOTH go down in the Russiagate investigation. 

Why Virginia Republicans Haven't Won Statewide Since 2009

The Virginia GOP's Three Stooges. 

I was a member of the Virginia Beach City Committee for the Republican Party for eight years.  During that same period, I was precinct chair for the Alanton precinct, historically a Republican bastion.  I left the GOP years ago and in my resignation letter stated that I could no longer remain in a party that failed to support the concept of separation of church and state. In the years since, the stranglehold of the Christofascists - especially those mobilized by The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group - has only increased.  Indeed, now the Christian right extremists have been joined by white supremacists as the second pillar of the Republican Party of Virginia.  The result?  The Virginia GOP has not won a statewide race since 2009 and one can see why if one looks at the candidates for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate: a neo-Confederate, an unhinged (in my view) self-anointed right wing "bishop," and a largely unknown individual whose main appeal is that he isn't either of his opponents.  The Virginia GOP has become a study in insanity and with every loss, the lunatic base blames defeat on the party's candidates being "too liberal" rather than looking in the mirror and realizing that a majority of Virginians find the GOP base and its "values" frightening if not repulsive.  A piece in CNN looks at this years class of clowns and lunatics vying for the GOP Senate nomination,  Here are excerpts:

Republicans haven't won a statewide race in Virginia since 2009, and GOP leaders have all but written off their chances of changing that trend in this year's Senate race.

The state's Republicans will select their Senate candidate in Tuesday's primary.

The best-known candidate, Corey Stewart, built his brand on defending Confederate icons. Another contender is a minister who called gay people "perverted" and "very sick people" and warned that yoga leads to Satan. And a third, who has emerged as the establishment preference, is most closely aligned with Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee.

None, national and state Republicans admit, are likely to give Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine a serious race in November's midterm elections.

Party leaders point to Ed Gillespie's losses in the 2014 Senate race and the 2017 governor's race as primary reasons that stronger candidates didn't enter the Senate race.

"It's just a blue wave, and I think that scared some people off," said John Whitbeck, the chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia. "On paper, Tim Kaine has an incredible amount of money. You've got to have a lot of courage to take him on."

There's also the reality that allowed Democrat Ralph Northam to cruise to a 9 percentage point victory over Gillespie in the governor's race last fall: Northern Virginia's suburbs are rapidly growing and diversifying, and increasingly follow the trends of the national political landscape.

"I definitely think that we have to accept the fact that the state's changed dramatically demographically," Whitbeck said. "The issues have to be right. We need to be focused on the fiscal issues that we've always been known for."

The problem for the GOP is that none of the contenders in Tuesday's primary appear to meet those requirements.

Stewart, the chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, narrowly lost the GOP gubernatorial nomination last year to Ed Gillespie but is seen by national party leaders and strategists as an embarrassment after Stewart tied his political identity to icons of the Confederacy.

Also in the race is E.W. Jackson . . . who was the party's failed 2013 nominee for lieutenant governor.

And outside Republican groups have rallied around Nick Freitas, a little-known 38-year-old state delegate who hasn't raised enough money for his own television ads.

In the last week of the primary, Freitas also showed a new willingness to attack Stewart, making reference to his ties to Paul Nehlen, an anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim House candidate in Wisconsin, and his links to criticism of "both sides" in the wake of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi gathering and the killing of a counter-protester.

"If we are to continue our party's legacy, we must reject Corey Stewart's dog-whistling of white supremacists, anti-Semites, and racists," Freitas said in an email to supporters, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

Though the outcome of the primary will get attention -- and the winner could prove a headache for the party nationally and statewide for the rest of the year -- Virginia Republicans are now wrestling with the bigger problem of how they can return to competitiveness in what was until recently a swing state.

Virginia has effectively become "two one-party states," voting like New Jersey in the northern suburbs and Alabama throughout its more rural regions, and the GOP has failed to adjust to meet that new reality, said former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"They keep running Alabama candidates and Alabama campaigns, and they've just quit communicating with the northern Virginia suburbs," Davis said.

"The Republican base has migrated from the country club to the country," he said. "The problem with that is, your country club areas are the growing areas. But there's very little tolerance within the party for people who don't appeal to the country base."

Until the Christofascists and white supremacists are ejected from the Virginia GOP base, don't expect sanity to prevail - which I am sure warms the hearts of Democrats and progressives.