The running mate’s role is to support and amplify the boss’s message, not to usurp it. As Gingrich demonstrated on Thursday night, with his call for American Muslims to be subjected to a Sharia-law test, he’s not one of nature’s number twos.
.. Many of the potential problems with picking Gingrich also apply to the New Jersey governor, who is loud and domineering, and has an equally dismal approval rating: thirty-four per cent
.. Trump’s only realistic, or semi-realistic, chance of getting to two hundred and seventy electoral votes is to storm through the Midwest and the Rust Belt, racking up huge majorities of white votes. To this end, his ideal choice would have been John Kasich, the popular governor of Ohio, but Kasich didn’t want the job. Nor did Rob Portman, the Ohio senator who served in the Bush Administration, or Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. And no one in Michigan or Pennsylvania was particularly suitable, either. That left Pence
.. In May, after wrapping up the nomination, he said, “This is called the Republican Party, not the Conservative Party.” But, like John McCain and Mitt Romney before him, Trump ultimately had to come to terms with the nature of the beast he is trying to ride to the White House.
.. Selecting Pence, a former head of the Republican Study Group on Capitol Hill, sends a signal that Trump is willing to work with the Party establishment and listen to what it says.
.. Ryan released a statement saying that there could be “no better choice for our vice-presidential candidate.”
.. Most people who take civil rights and the Constitution seriously are already aghast at the prospect of a Trump Presidency. Is there anyone out there who was willing to look past Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims, a resumption of torture, and the deportation of eleven million undocumented workers, but who will not vote for the Republican ticket because of Pence’s support for an Indiana law that allowed businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians? Perhaps such people exist, but I doubt there are very many.
Senator Joni Ernst Is Given Prime Speaking Slot at G.O.P. Convention
Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa will speak at the Republican National Convention, making her among the prominent conservative politicians the Trump campaign has lined up for the event
.. Giving a prime speaking slot to Ms. Ernst — who was being vetted as a possible running mate to Mr. Trump but is no longer under consideration — is fitting in many ways, like in possibly helping the candidate neutralize the criticism that he has been insensitive to women.
.. In recent days, some speakers from the political world have started to leak out, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who told a local television station on Tuesday that he would address the convention.
Waiting for the new Trump
Changes are underway in the candidate’s operation, but can he change himself?
But many Republicans, both supporters and skeptics of Trump’s campaign, note that the consolidation of power by Manafort and the children does not guarantee any change in the candidate himself
.. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Kushner, whose influence has grown in recent months, had been trying to convince nervous more mainstream Republicans that Trump was just doing what he had to do to win the primary and that a pivot was imminent. “They told people he inherently understood the tone and temperament required of a general election and that the real Trump was sophisticated, charming, successful — a dealmaker who would be able to cut the deal,” one high-level GOP source said.
.. Scott Walker, the former candidate who has hinted he’d be open to receiving the nomination in such a circumstance, said Tuesday the delegates “should be able to vote the way they see fit.”
The Destruction of Progressive Wisconsin
Last month, Mr. Walker signed a bill that allowed corporations to donate directly to political parties. On the same day, he signed a law that replaced the state’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Board, a body that is responsible for election oversight and enforcing ethics codes, with two commissions made up of partisan appointees
.. In 1905, Wisconsin became the third state to enact Civil Service reform, helping establish it as a national model for clean government. The reforms were one of the many achievements of Gov. Robert M. La Follette Sr., who later founded the Progressive Party and ran for president on its ticket. But Mr. Walker’s new Civil Service bill replaces anonymous exams with résumés, opening the door to political or racial bias that would prove almost impossible to detect because personnel files are not part of the public record.
.. it centralizes hiring within the Department of Administration, the most politicized agency in the state’s government. Incoming résumés would be judged by one of the governor’s appointees.
.. By adding the Civil Service bill, Mr. Walker brings Wisconsin closer to the achievement of a long-sought goal of the libertarian right: universal “at-will employment.”
.. In 2011, Mr. Walker assured state workers that they did not need their unions because of Wisconsin’s Civil Service rules. “In Wisconsin, the rights that most workers have have been set through the Civil Service system, which predates collective bargaining by several generations,” he said. “That doesn’t change. All the Civil Service protections — the strongest Civil Service system in the country — still strongly remains intact.”
.. In December, Senator Cruz encouraged his supporters to relieve Mr. Walker of his campaign debt, generating speculation that he might become the vice-presidential choice for the like-minded Mr. Cruz.