let's be clear - the republicans don't have to pick pence. that's up to them and, frankly, i'd advise them not to. they're going to be tempted to, though...
i don't think there's any polling, but correct me if i'm wrong.
i'm not actually convinced that pence could win a primary. see, that's the thing we've all forgotten - the reason that trump won was that he was the liberal republican on the ballot, and the party was moving away from both the evangelical right and the anarcho-capitalism of the likes of ted cruz. he wasn't a great choice, but he was actually the best one. trump won the nomination because he was the most moderate, least extreme republican on the ballot.
just a reality check, there.
and, now, the party is finding themselves losing ground on the right to joe biden, who is more appealing to wide swaths of the republican base than donald trump is. meanwhile, the support that trump was able to peel away from clinton by running to her left (and he was, broadly, the more left-wing candidate in 2016 on paper - and he has surprised me repeatedly around things i thought he was full of shit on, like abandoning the tpp and pulling out of the wto, as well as his relatively non-aggressive foreign policy, which i support as a leftist) has largely evaporated - at least for now. that was trump's strength, and he can't win if he can't turn that around.
what i'll say is that i endorsed clinton in 2016 and sort of regret it - i should have endorsed jill stein, instead. and, i'm endorsing howie hawkins, now (so long as it's trump v biden; i'll have to explicitly endorse biden, if pence runs). so, i'd argue his record actually exceeded his rhetoric on these specific issues, and he's increased his standing with me over the last four years rather than decreased it. but, that doesn't seem to be the consensus on the ground - all polling i've seen is clear that biden is doing about as well as obama did with these specific midwestern voters, which pulls the rug out from under trump's chances.
so, the murmuring is that the republicans are scared that trump is going to lose them their base without making any gains anywhere. but, i'm not sure they realize what their base is anymore.
if they run pence, it might help them win in states like georgia and texas by pulling back in some of the wandering conservative vote. but, is that their base? it's going to wreck them in the long run, as pence brings back all of the backwards attitudes into the party that so many people, like myself, who aren't comfortable supporting conservative democrats, were hoping trump was in the process of doing away with. trump hasn't talked a lot about things like abortion and gay marriage; to be clear, he's generally made the wrong decisions when forced to, but he's tried to avoid it. a pence presidency is going to delve directly into christofascism, and without so much as a hiccup. bathroom laws for all.
and, that is going to cave the gains they were making outside of the core red states, and put them back into the position they were in in 2012, where they were commanding an increasingly shrinking demographic of heartland conservatives being chipped away at from every direction. meanwhile, people like myself are just going to end up supporting third parties, when they might prefer a liberal republican over a conservative democrat - and don't want to concede the next 50 elections before they start. i mean, i want a fucking choice, i don't want to be constantly voting against looney-tunes idiots like mike pence.
again: i know that the democrats are the traditional conservative party in the united states, and i don't exactly want to stop them from regaining themselves. but, what's the right way to peel the republicans away from their evangelical base - which is dying, and which is going to happen over time, regardless? i mean, there's not going to be an evangelical base in a few more years, and the party will have no option but to move past it. where's it going? how do you direct them, in the best way possible, away from something that is clearly a losing strategy?
well, who've they got, then?
i don't know.
but, they'd be wise to avoid mike pence. he might feel familiar, but he'll lose - and the evangelicals will lose the next primary, too. their time is passed, and the party needs to look beyond them.