A quick guide to Mike Pence, for anyone who hasn’t bothered to look him up yet.
He might seem boring, but beware of the quiet ones.
Trump’s brand is international. People love to hate him the world over. But Mike Pence, Governor of Indiana, potential VP… His appeal, positive or negative, doesn’t travel. No one outside of America cares about some cookie-cutter politician from the Midwest playing second fiddle to the show’s star pony. I’m not sure anyone cares about him in America either. With Trump constantly shouting in our faces, it’s been hard to focus on anything else, and I hadn’t bothered to look up Mike Pence properly until a few days ago. Which was a mistake, because him, his views, and his track record deserve the utmost scrutiny.
This is therefore a quick guide to Mike Pence, for the uninitiated.
For starters, he’s a born-again evangelical Christian who believes homosexuality can be cured.
We could stop right there, but let’s continue.
He has called for federal funds to be directed away from “organisations encouraging the spread of HIV” and towards conversion therapy programs. Let’s take a moment to remember we’re in the 21st century, and let those words sink in: conversion therapy. He has opposed acts protecting homosexuals against discrimination, and signed others which could potentially protect those seeking to discriminate. You can probably guess his views on same-sex marriage, gays in the military, or anything else certain to precipitate societal collapse, threaten national security, etc…
One of his major successes as Governor is the legislation of a mammoth anti-choice bill designed to make it as prohibitive as possible for women to have an abortion. This was the culmination of what has been dubbed “a one-man crusade’ against abortion, with the nonprofit organisation Planned Parenthood getting the brunt of his passion for fetuses. He signed every anti-abortion bill he could get his hands on, and at one point even co-sponsored a bill which would have blocked federal funds from paying for abortions except in cases of “forcible rape”. Tough luck for cash-strapped victims of “unforced rape”: either bear your rapist’s child or take up that second job. Trump merely tweets his misogyny; Pence makes it law.
He doesn’t think condoms offer adequate protection against STDs, and supports abstinence education instead. For Mike, the safest sex is no sex.
He supported the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, and opposed the closure of Guantanamo Bay, obviously.
He’s a fervent climate change denier, calling global warming “a myth”, and has a habit of voting against anything that might lead to environmental protection and energy efficiency. For Mike, in a world of dwindling natural resources, oil and offshore drilling are the way forward.
He once planned the launch of a state-run, taxpayer-funded news outlet, where the content would be partly provided and presented by elected officials. A great idea: they do it in all the best dictatorships. Alas it was never to be; the idea was killed off days after its announcement, following an onslaught of outrage and ridicule.
He opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage more than once, arguing that it would “hurt the working poor”.
He supports the privatisation of Social Security, which would leave payouts at the mercy of fluctuating markets.
He tried to block Syrian refugees from being resettled in Indiana.
He voted against the No Child Left Behind act. Feel free to google it, but the clue’s in the title.
He signed a bill allowing firearms to be kept in vehicles on school property.
He thinks tobacco isn’t as harmful as it’s made out to be.
The list goes on. Suffice to say anything remotely progressive is a big no-no in Mike’s world.
We don’t really know where Trump stands on anything, since he’ll contradict himself for the sake of a good sound bite. But we know where Mike Pence stands: on a mountain of trash, head held high.
None of this should come as much of a surprise. Pence is a classic, corn-fed conservative, brought in to draw back the traditional Republican base scared off by Trump. In the political arena, he’s experienced and understated — Trump’s opposite. An ideal Vice President, one to do Trump’s bidding while Trump focuses on what he’s good at: running his big, stupid mouth in front of a camera.
They could prove a dangerous team, with Trump hogging the limelight, keeping people distracted, while Pence stays in the shadows, quietly working his regressive legal magic, slowly chipping away at America’s precarious liberalism.
