Mike Pence was interviewed on This Week, last Sunday and he proved once again that while looking very Presidential he is anything but. The only question asked that he didn’t hem and haw over, without giving a straight answer, was his plan for the debate, and then he immediately lied about what Joe Biden has and hasn’t done for the country.
The only statement he made in the entire interview that expressed his vision for the future went to attacking Biden for weakening the country, which as any neutral observer will tell you is blatantly false, especially if you compare what Pence and Trump did in their four years.
The American people are better off economically now and the nation’s industry is thriving in comparison to all other G7 countries.
After four years of Trump kissing the asses of leaders in Russia, China and North Korea, Biden has strengthened our network of foreign allies, put Russia and China in their places and reinvigorated our international leadership.
Pence’s point of view is, of course, slanted by the fact that he has to take some responsibility for what happened during the Trump administration, even though he had little to do with the decision making.
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Right now, Donald Trump leads the GOP field of Presidential candidates by some 40% over the next highest polling candidate, Ron DeSantis. The obvious question: what the hell are these people doing running against Trump? The answer for most of them is a quite clearly, wasting time and money. What we have here is a group of true believing ass kissers who are putting all they have into the extremely remote possibility that Trump will do something so egregious that his loyal supporters will abandon him and cleave to them.
The fact that there are some eight Republican candidates currently suffering from this severe disorder only makes it more absurd.
If there has been anything that has occurred in the last seven years to indicate that Donald Trump can do anything to shake the loyalty of his base it has to this point been very cleverly hidden.
I find it almost impossible to believe that anything he does will shake the blind resolve of his current backers. There is one Trumpian statement that appears to hold truth. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and these fools would still vote for him. Hell, they’d probably make up excuses as to why he did it.
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There are homeless everywhere in America but nowhere in the numbers that exist on the West Coast. From Seattle to Portland, to San Francisco to Los Angeles the numbers are staggering. The answers to “why” are simple, climate. But that, it seems is about to end. The West Coast has had a welcoming climate for as long as one can remember. If you are going to live in a tent, Los Angeles is preferable to Bismarck, North Dakota. That’s pretty simple, but now that’s changing. It may not freeze in LA but being washed out to sea is even worse.
Those who don’t believe in climate change are either idiots or just so invested in their fossil fuel portfolio that they don’t care as long as they can buy that yacht before the sun burns us to a crisp.
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So, we watched the GOP Presidential debates on Wednesday night, and it wouldn’t have been half bad if any of their mothers had taught the debaters even a modicum of manners. Here were eight supposed grownups yelling at each other like fishwives.
A couple of them, like Asa Hutchinson and Nikki Hailey managed to survive with some dignity but for the most park it was a knock down drag out brawl with a huge percentage of the dialogue lost to shouting voices. Then there was the audience, made up, it seemed, of mostly Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswamy fans that was as rude and ill-mannered as one would expect them to be considering their allegiance’s.
Who won, who lost? Hard to tell. I thought Ramaswamy made a fool of himself and revealed himself to be the greedy millionaire he has made himself into, but both GOP and Democratic commentators seemed to think he was okay. I thought his concept of foreign policy was disastrous and his desire to kiss Putin’s ass a prelude to WWIII.
DeSantis showed us what he has been showing us all along, that he has no personal appeal and that he can’t cut it in the infighting. He lost it a couple of times when confronted by Christi and Ramaswamy.
Burgum made us all wonder why he was there and who had been dumb enough to kick in a buck to get him there. This is a guy from nowhere with nothing to say and no ability to say it. They will lose him and never miss him.
Tim Scott kept trying to say the right things, but he just doesn’t believe enough of them to be able to sell them. Besides what chance does a black man really have in what’s left of the GOP.
Pence looked like he was going to have a good show but couldn’t hold his temper and reminded us that maybe the real reason he acted so heroically on Jan 6 was not that he respected the constitution so much, but that he realized that by not doing what he did he would be flirting with a jail term. This is a guy that every time he opens his mouth about religion, reminds me that Karl Marx was right.
Chris Christie made the strongest points, despite which none of the commentators were willing to give him anything. It seems his vocal opposition to Trump has all the rest of the Republicans running scared and no one wants to sit next to him in assembly. Christie is the smartest, toughest, most agile politician in the group and even though he rubs a lot of people the wrong way he would make the best president. Too bad for the GOP that in this climate he doesn’t stand a chance.
That leaves Hutchinson and Hailey, both of whom know how to conduct themselves in a Presidential debate and both of whom display some pretty functional thinking. A plus for Hailey is that she was the only candidate on the platform who knows squat bout foreign policy. Either might give Biden a run for his money but unfortunately for the Republicans neither will have a shot against Trump in the current climate.
It’s very simple. The GOP is not looking for a realistic candidate. They want Trump. They don’t care if he’s a crook and a traitor. They have been willing to believe in him despite actions that would have had another ex-president lynched. Trump is the ultimate con- man and his followers, the quintessential marks.