Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana clearly made a decision before last night’s vice-presidential debate. He was going to defend Donald Trump with style rather than substance.
.. So Pence took a different approach. He used his performance skills, built up over years as a successful television host and politician.
Insiders: Trump will sink Pence in VP debate
“Tim Kaine is the relatable neighbor next door,” an Iowa Republican added. “Mike Pence is the guy you feel the need to impress in church.”
.. “He’s a really good communicator and engaging personality,” a Pennsylvania Republican said. “Tim Kaine isn’t either.”
Kaine’s plan: Turn Pence into Trump
One Senate ally calls on Kaine to make Pence ‘own every bit of Trump’s radical, racist, misogynist agenda.’
Pence will already have his talking points down on Tuesday evening — and getting him to deviate could prove nearly impossible.
.. Pence’s job is to steady the ship and remind conservatives what the Republican Party stands for: a pro-growth economic agenda and a break from the left-leaning policies of President Barack Obama.
..What’s extraordinary for Pence, however, is just how many individual topics he must be prepared to defend Trump on to get to his more orthodox pitch to Republican voters.
.. “Is Mike Pence going to aggressively defend his running mate when he hasn’t necessarily been inclined to go on full defense [in the past]?” asked a Kaine aide in an
.. Kaine’s allies are looking for Pence to either assume all of Trump’s rhetoric and positions or to publicly acknowledge disagreements with Trump. Either conclusion would be a win for Kaine and his fellow Democrats. Pence has been quick to laughingly admit he has a different “style” than Trump, but he will work hard to keep any daylight on policy from emerging between he and Trump.
.. “I hope Tim makes Pence own every bit of Trump’s radical, racist, misogynist agenda.”
.. And if Pence can weather Kaine’s Trump barbs, he’ll have a chance to stabilize the Republican ticket by simply contrasting his conservative bona fides with Clinton’s more liberal agenda.
.. Then there are Kaine’s own breaks with Clinton. He personally supports the Hyde Amendment, which bans taxpayer-funded abortions, yet says he will work with Clinton to overturn it as vice president. He praised the Trans-Pacific Partnership the same week he was selected as Clinton’s running mate, then came out against it.
.. “In any debate, he tries to be whatever the audience needs him to be,” Kilgore said of Kaine, whose raised eyebrow is a signature look.
.. more than 40 percent of voters don’t know who either Pence or Kaine is,
Can the Club for Growth Survive Donald Trump?
The free-market group spent big to defeat Trump, but he proved its supporters weren’t quite as faithful as once thought.
In the early Obama years, the group helped achieve its longstanding goal—the virtual annihilation of moderate Republicanism—by bankrolling Tea Party candidates. By 2015, it had become, arguably, the most influential anti-establishment interest group in politics and was closely aligned with the ascendant House Freedom Caucus. But in 2016, the Club for Growth watched in horror as millions of its ostensible supporters flocked to a candidate who shared few of its most cherished beliefs. Worse yet, Trump had won them over by co-opting the Club’s most reliable tactic—channeling anarchic rage at establishment politicians.
.. “The Club for Growth is both anti-Trump and anti-establishment,” Walsh says. “They’re seeing their slice of the GOP pie shrink.”
.. The Club was founded in 1999 by the banker/activists Richard Gilder and Thomas Rhodes, and the economic pundit Stephen Moore. All three were supply-siders in an era of moderate Republicanism. The group’s mission was to rid Washington of tax-and-spenders and replace them with extreme fiscal hawks.
.. Their darlings included incoming Sens. Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey, a former Club for Growth president.
.. Suddenly, any sitting Republican to the left of Ayn Rand—the group wields scorecards—risked getting primaried by a Club-sponsored insurgent.
.. Indeed, the group’s super PAC has historically been funded by a handful of super-rich white men, including financiers Jackson and Warren Stephens of Little Rock, New York hedge fund baron Robert Mercer and PayPal founder/Gawker Media bête noire Peter Thiel.
.. “When Ted Cruz … ‘shut the government down,’ people would ask, ‘What do you think of the guy now?’” says Chocola, “I’d say, ‘I love the guy. Tell me one thing he advocates that’s not in the GOP platform. The difference is he would actually fight for it.’”
.. May, Club President David McIntosh met with the candidate at Trump Tower. Accounts of the event differ, but the result was that McIntosh wrote Trump a letter asking him for a donation of $1 million. He refused, the Club began airing attack ads, and a Twitter war broke out.
.. Finally, in July, the Club for Growth received some welcome news, when Trump selected Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate. During his congressional career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, nobody donated more to Pence than the Club.
.. In fact, as POLITICO reported last month, there is a widespread feeling in Washington that the Club has become little more than a fundraiser for the Freedom Caucus, at the expense of any other agenda.
.. “If the [Club for Growth] makes their top priority to increase the size of the House Freedom Caucus, what does that get?” asks a Republican strategist working with one such group. “On Nov. 9, you’re going to have a smaller House majority and possibly a larger House Freedom Caucus. That strikes me as a strange goal to have.”