Mike Pence’s inane presidential campaign
Christopher Tremoglie
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Former Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday that he was dropping out of contention in his bid to become the 2024 Republican nominee for president, the Washington Examiner reported.
But after a lackluster campaign, and perhaps even before he announced it, many wondered what the campaign’s purpose was and who convinced Pence that he might have had any chance.
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“So after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today,” Pence said during a speech Saturday afternoon at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference in Las Vegas.
Pence’s campaign immensely struggled to gain any traction since it started, and it was always viewed as destined to fail. At the time he decided to suspend his campaign, Pence was polling nationally at 3.5%. Pence was even behind Vivek Ramaswamy, a person who has never held a political office.
It raises the question: Why did Pence even bother to run in the first place?
“We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets,” Pence said. “To the American people, I say: This is not my time, but it is still your time. I urge you to hold fast to what matters most: faith, family, and the Constitution.”
Pence was not a particularly memorable vice president, with the possible exception of his last two weeks in office. Overall, Democrats disliked him, and radicals on the Left despised him because of his faith and religious beliefs. He was never going to get support from at least half the nation’s voters anyway. That wouldn’t have been an issue in the GOP Primary, but going forward, it would have.
As for Republican voters, Pence’s claim to fame in presidential politics came after the 2020 election defeat. During this time, Pence made the correct choice to certify the 2020 presidential election victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, despite requests to do the opposite. For doing that, and not succumbing to the enormous political pressure he faced, Pence deserves applause. Unfortunately, by also doing that, it alienated him from many of the people who might have supported him the most.
Then, in multiple instances during the debate, when Pence was given a spotlight, he looked flustered and unprepared, and flubbed several of his responses. In one example, when asked a question by Dana Perino about Obamacare, Pence talked about mass shootings, abolishing the Department of Education, Federalism, and nearly everything except Obamacare. It drew the sarcastic reply from Perino, “OK, I’m not sure if we got an answer on Obamacare,” before she went to the next topic.
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Pence appears to be an honorable guy and probably has the demeanor and virtuous qualities that people should want in a president. However, he has always been as exciting as watching paint dry. For a political position that requires charisma, Pence has repeatedly shown he doesn’t appear to have any.
That, combined with most of the voters in the country not having a favorable opinion of him, made his decision to run seemingly pointless.