8/16/2023 0 Comments Mike penc good choice![]() In the end, the vice presidency was not significant enough for Roosevelt to fight over and he accepted Fairbanks. But getting Hitt on the ticket would have meant a fight between Roosevelt and the convention bosses. Roosevelt’s true love was a Congressman named Robert R. Fairbanks was as different from Roosevelt as possible: He was cold and distant, in marked contrast to Roosevelt’s famous ebullience he was heir to the old-guard McKinley faction within the Republican Party, in contrast to Roosevelt’s more modern aspirations for his party and he was from the Midwest, whereas Roosevelt hailed from New York City. In order to please the Republican Party’s conservative wing, which was not at all happy with the radical reformist politics of Teddy Roosevelt, that year’s convention forced Senator Charles Fairbanks (R-Ind.) upon him as his running mate. In many of those matches the relationship was cool and distant if not downright hostile.Īn especially hostile pair was formed at the turn of the century in the case of “the Hot Tamale and the Indiana Icicle” - one wit’s description of the Republican presidential ticket of 1904 featuring Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Fairbanks. Sometimes these pairings worked out, but more often than not the relationship has been reminiscent of a badly arranged marriage - put together by political expediency. The vice presidency often went to the faction that lost the presidency as a sort of consolation prize. In the old-fashioned system the convention chose the president and the vice president. That is a function of the modern nomination system where the choice of the vice president is no longer integral to achieving the nomination itself. In modern-day American politics we are used to seeing loyal pairs of presidents and vice presidents. The enormity of this decision eclipsed his previous years of loyalty and has put the two men on a collision course as they seek the 2024 Republican nomination. And yet, in the defining moment of the Trump presidency, when the President wanted the Vice President to interrupt the electoral vote count, Pence chose the Constitution over Trump. When Roosevelt did get in, at the last minute, Garner lost handily.įor most of his time in office Pence was steadfast in the role of “lap dog” - as he shored up the evangelical base of the party for Trump. In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president, John Nance Garner ran for the Democrat nomination, but for most of that time Roosevelt was not an announced candidate. In all of American history we haven’t seen a vice president run directly against a president he served since Vice President Thomas Jefferson ran against President John Adams in the election of 1800. Maybe even more important, Trump’s appeal these days is based less on ideology and more on his grievances, his warnings that the “Deep State” is out to change the country, and his message of anger.Former Vice President Mike Pence has chosen to run against the President he served for the Republican nomination for president. And while Pence is an unapologetic conservative, particularly on hot-button cultural issues, most of the Republicans running for their party’s nomination are also conservative. You may be thinking that Pence has political assets that I have ignored, including plenty of campaign experience and a conservative record that GOP primary voters will love.īut Trump has demonstrated that significant political experience doesn’t matter to many on the right. So, Pence loses both the hard-core Trump crowd and those who are critical of the former president, which limits his potential appeal to a narrow band of Republican voters. ![]() Many of them believe that he refused to follow Trump’s wishes in December and January after the 2020 election, costing Trump another four years in the White House. Of course, Pence will continue to have trouble appealing to Trump loyalists. Given that, it is difficult to believe that most evangelicals base their voting decisions on questions of personal morality. (Remember, Trump carried 80 percent of white born-again or evangelical Christians in his 2016 run for the White House, according to the national exit poll.) Count me as skeptical.Įvangelicals did not have a problem voting for a man who bragged that he could grab a woman’s private parts or who had an affair with an adult film actress. Pence seems to think that there is an evangelical “lane” that he can exploit as he seeks his party’s nomination. ![]() ![]() That may not be a problem for evangelical voters looking for a moral leader (whatever that might mean to them), but it could well limit Pence’s overall appeal in a Republican race where he starts far behind the leaders, Trump and DeSantis. To this day, Pence often sounds to me as if he is running to be the country’s pastor in chief, not its commander in chief. With his piercing eyes, intense focus, and consistently conservative views, I didn’t find him entertaining or engaging. ![]()
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