Dem
51
GOP
49
And speaking of Mike Pence, his support for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination continues to be anemic. In poll after poll, he sits in the single digits, usually between 5% and 7%. That is, when the pollsters bother to ask about him at all.
Anyhow, Team Pence has taken a close look at the situation, and has figured out what ails the former VP's campaign. The problem is... wait for it... Nikki Haley. That's right. Pence and his campaign staffers have decided that the media's coverage of Haley is too fawning, and that she gets lots of ink and pixels when she has a good day, and not enough ink and pixels when she has a bad day.
There's actually something of a history of tensions between Pence and Haley. Yes, sometimes they say nice things about each other. But when they were both members of the Trump administration, each poached members of the other's staff. They were also in competition for the former president's attention and affections. Further, when it became clear that Trump was unhappy with Pence, rumors swirled that he might pick Haley as his running mate in 2020. Haley did little to dispel those rumors, which infuriated the Pence camp. We would also be remiss if we did not point out that Haley is a woman, and Pence has some less-than-admirable ideas about women, in general.
Tensions notwithstanding, the Pence campaign's theory of what's gone wrong is all kinds of stupid. Even if he somehow absorbed all of Haley's support, he'd still trail Trump and Ron DeSantis by double digits. Pence is running a campaign aimed at the base, which means he's willfully disregarding the fact that the base hates him. That isn't going to change, no matter what he does, and no matter what kind of coverage Haley gets. If he wanted to make standing up for the Constitution on 1/6 the centerpiece of his message, and to pitch himself as the guy who can lead a new, improved, and non-criminal Republican revolution, we could see that. It probably still wouldn't work, because Pence isn't especially popular outside the Trump faction. But at least it would be operating within the realm of reality, as opposed to the delusional fantasy world that the former VP and his staff currently seems to be occupying.
A Pence staffer who spoke to Politico did share one insight that we would regard as useful. Speaking of Haley's campaign, he said that someone who is polling in the single digits is not a serious candidate. That's pretty on-point, we would say. Team Pence might want to read that sentence a few times and give it some careful consideration... (Z)