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[smjjames]

Trump getting impeached will probably require the republicans losing control of the Senate and House, which would then help neuter the damage Pence would do, so hopefully Trump maintains just enough popularity to make him a risky enough albatross that congress just sits around grumbling about him instead of trying to seize the Pence by the, er... balls.

Neuter.. Isn't that exactly what Pence once said he wants to do to gay people? Or was that one of the other Repucrazies?

Not sure if he ever said that, but given his extreme (even for Republicans) views, wouldn't be surprising. Wouldn't be the only one who would want to do that kind of thing.

[Max™]

He's a supporter of conversion therapy last time I checked, which is pretty fucking awful.

[Rolan7]

Yeah.  It's not quite "shock all the gays straight", but it's "let people shock their children straight".

Nah it means he's gay.  Of the people I know, the LGBT people are much more likely to want Trump over Pence.  Trump has always been wishy-washy flippy-floppy on LGBT rights, Pence... less so.  And with a Republican congress and a right-leaning supreme court with some older leftist judges, there is some real fear Pence could do damage. 

I have to admit, as much as I don't think Trump is qualified to be President, this is something I've been worrying about.  Bit selfish of me, I guess.

The Republican establishment hates Trump, and actively worked against him for almost the entire primary.  Their sudden about-face couldn't have been more transparent.  I've always said they're likely to discard him for Pence when he's no longer useful - as a rubber stamp, but mainly as a scapegoat.

This is unrelated to LGBT rights, but Pence is kind of insane.  When he was governor of Indiana, he opposed legalizing a syringe exchange program and favored legislation that made owning a syringe illegal unless you had a medical need.  This during the opiod crisis no less.  The result was a lot of dirty needles floating around in Indiana, even among hospitals (which often use syringe exchange programs to swap out used needles).  So somehow, in 2014 we had a new HIV crisis.  Meanwhile the CDC came to Indiana to investigate and all the law enforcement and health officials tried to persuade him to change his mind.  After two months Mike Pence told them he was going to pray on it.  Two days later he finally relented to everyone and made a syringe exchange program.  Over the course of all this, 190 people got HIV.  There's no cure and the treatment is very expensive, those people are going to be dealing with this forever because Mike Pence is a fanatic and a moron.  When the health insurance debates were happening he didn't support any measures to improve the opioid crisis either, he has no remorse and he isn't going to change as a person.

Jeez, I wasn't aware of this.  Hardly surprising, though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Pence is a Full Falwell on the religious right scale, he's one of the few holdouts still left.

[Trekkin]

He's a supporter of conversion therapy last time I checked, which is pretty fucking awful.

And abstinence-only sex education, but certainly not needle exchange. He's also against women serving in the military.

That's the problem with Pence, from the Congressional Republican standpoint: he enthusiastically endorses everything they dog-whistle about in order to win the evangelical vote, especially the parts about everyone else's suffering being either tutelary or retributive. That's a hard sell in a party currently united by cultural resentment.

[martinuzz]

So Pence is basically an IS imam?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Pence is a slimy evil fucker, but I wouldn't equate him to the IS. Maybe if there was no rule of law. Pence is just as religious right as it is possible for a statewide politician to be and get elected, which is strongly but not absolutely. There are still some folks who would call him a limp-wristed heretic.

[smjjames]

He's a supporter of conversion therapy last time I checked, which is pretty fucking awful.

And abstinence-only sex education, but certainly not needle exchange. He's also against women serving in the military.

That's the problem with Pence, from the Congressional Republican standpoint: he enthusiastically endorses everything they dog-whistle about in order to win the evangelical vote, especially the parts about everyone else's suffering being either tutelary or retributive. That's a hard sell in a party currently united by cultural resentment.

Isn't cultural resentment the whole point about the dog-whistles? It's also a harder sell when the cultural resentment has economic roots rather than religious. Well, some of it is religious, but Pence is pretty far out there compared to most Republicans.

I wonder if this would end up being his 'Katrina moment' https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16222404/trump-crowd-hurricane-harvey-victims Unless his supporters have become so jaded to his inappropriately timed comments that it doesn't matter. Although Bush's 'Katrina moment' was a whole bunch of things that compounded rather than any single thing.

[Frumple]

I'unno, property gospel is a thing. Harder sell might not mean a hard one.

[RedKing]

Y'know, I figured Trump was going to fuck up his photo op, I just couldn't be sure how. Should have known he'd focus on crowd size.

"Y'know, I went to one of those relief centers, and what a crowd! Amazing! They were just packed in like sardines, just to hear me!"

[Frumple]

... okay, that was parody, right? Not transcript?

[RedKing]

That was parody. The fact that no one is ever sure anymore is....yeah. 


I love too his pledge of "we're going to get you back and operating immediately".

A. Businesses operate. People *live*. They're looking to get back to some semblance of a normal life.
B. It ain't gonna be immediately. Not even remotely close. He needs to be telling them, "Look....this is going to take a while. Perhaps a long while. So we appreciate your patience, and just know we're doing everything we can."

[smjjames]

Definetly parody, I don't think he has visited any evacuation/relief centers yet, but um, yeah, given how he seems to reflexively remark on crowd size, I could see him making another gaffe there.

It wasn't an absolute gaffe and if that's the worst gaffe that comes out of all this, then great, but Trump is bound to accidentially make it worse.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There's no point in attempting to fix Donald Trump's statement's to what he ought to have said. His entire approach, his way of being from its most basic, the axioms of his rhetorical style, are all wrong and broken to shit. There is no possible version of Donald Trump who remains meaningfully Donald Trump who could have not fucked this up somehow.

Impressive, really.

[smjjames]

What's impressive is that he has yet to absolutely fuck this up, however, this will take a long time and thus, there will be plenty of chances to make an absolute gaffe.

It's offset somewhat by the fact that he seems to be really trying to not screw up. What got Bush wasn't any one single thing (though the photo of him looking out while flying over New Orleans seems to have been the largest), but a whole bunch of things that compounded.