When former US Vice President Mike Pence announced his candidature earlier this week for the Republican nomination for president, going up against his former boss Donald Trump, the sense of high drama was palpable. And it will get even more intense going forward, with expectations of the contest playing out as a US daytime television revenge drama. For most of his time in office, Mr. Pence was steadfast in his support for Mr Trump, as he helped consolidate the ‘Bible Belt’ base of the Republican Party for his boss. Yet, in the defining moment of his presidency, when Mr. Trump wanted his deputy to interrupt the electoral vote count, Mr. Pence chose the Constitution over his boss. According to a veteran commentator on US politics, the enormity of this decision eclipsed – for Mr. Trump’s fanatical supporters and from all accounts the man himself ~ Mr. Pence’s previous years of loyalty.
The two men are on a collision course the likes of which has not been seen before in American political history; loyal pairs of presidents and vice presidents have been the norm thus far unless one goes way back. That, in turn, experts point out, is a function of the modern nomination system where the choice of the vice president is no longer integral to achieving the presidential nomination itself; the presidential candidate endorses the person s/he wants as her/his running mate and primary voters, not delegates to the party convention, decide the nomination. In the old system, however, the convention chose the president and the vice president. The vice presidency often went to the faction that lost the presidency as a means to ensuring there was no lingering bitterness within. Sometimes these pairings worked, but the relationship at other times was like a “badly arranged marriage” put together by political expediency. Mr. Pence trails badly among primary Republican voters despite his status as a former vice president and opinion polls suggesting high name recognition for him. He is attempting to position himself as the traditional conservative whom the Republican Party used to represent in the pre-Trump era in the hope that the cult around the former president does not continue to successfully hijack the party’s agenda.
But it’s a long shot. Mr. Trump could, of course, still lose the nomination race, but even if that upset ~ and it would be a big one ~ were to come to fruition, there is no way he would support his former deputy. Such is Mr. Trump’s animus towards Mr. Pence that he has already started attacking him with a viciousness that seems rooted in deep personal dislike. It’s not about politics, policies, and programmes anymore. The narrative being built around the former vice president entering the nomination fray by his opponent and ex-boss, is that Mr. Pence was the ‘betrayer-in-chief’ of his commander-in-chief. The Trump cohort is baying for blood, and the former vice president is unlikely to survive what’s coming his way