The Romulan Republic wrote:Which makes me wonder why he signed on with Trump.
Aside from the point that there turn out to be a lot of Republicans who actually believe that Hillary Clinton would be even worse to have in office than Donald Trump...
One might cynically note that Trump has "IMPEACH ME" painted on his butt in big bright letters. If the conventional wisdom about him is correct he is unlikely to secure re-election; if the conventional wisdom about him had been right prior to the election he would have been unlikely to win.
In the former case Pence is (in theory) well positioned to make an independent presidential bid as "the reasonable Republican," or so he might hope. In the latter, he has, again, managed to raise his political profile to a national rather than state level,
without the stigma of losing a primary the way Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, etc. did.
The Romulan Republic wrote:My point is that the Republican Primary electorate could have gone with someone else who would have checked the same ideological boxes while being less utterly vile personally.
As I've mentioned, Trump (by some kind of avatar of the god of used car salesmen, plus obvious psychopathy) is
very very good at pushing people's buttons. Very hard.
I don't disagree with your criticism, but frankly this was the inevitable outgrowth of Fox News and the RNC trying to convince their voter base that Hillary Clinton is the Antichrist, that George W. Bush was a good president, and that Barack Obama is
prooobably a secret traitor.
The Republican leadership and propaganda machine lit a fire that sucked most of the fact-based, qualification-based oxygen out of the room that is the Republican primary process. It is unsurprising that an anaerobic bacterium would become the dominant form of life.
Though I think this is partly a consequence of how large the primary field was this time around- those who didn't want Trump were split between a dozen candidates, and several major candidates. I can't help but wonder if Cruz, Rubio, or Kasich could have smoked the Donald one on one.
I wouldn't be surprised. On the other hand, I think any one of those candidates would have struggled because they'd have to deal with Trump going 'haha, I can push the buttons of your own supporters harder than you can, because I'm willing to bullshit harder than you are.'
There's still no viable third option that could possibly have won, so it's still got to be either A or B. So in such a scenario your best option is to let someone else choose for you?
Believe me, as a frequent critic of third party bullshit, I am not unsympathetic to the problem.
But frankly, if the best your party can offer is Donald Trump, its time to suck it up and take a loss for the good of the country/world.
I don't disagree.