mike pence – Steel Phoenix Studios

dog-of-ulthar:

Trump is an awful person, but he isn’t a competent politician. Pence is possibly a worse person and a very competent politician. There is already a conservative plan to impeach Trump so Pence can take the presidency.

A Pence presidency probably has less chance of accidental nuclear war, but a much greater chance of extremely socially conservative legislation which would be devastating to civil rights in America. Trump just wants to make money and feel important; Pence has an agenda.

Nixon was impeached for corruption. We already know Trump is corrupt. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about inappropriate sexual conduct. We already know Trump has lied about inappropriate sexual conduct.

It’s only a matter of time before he lies about something too big for his press aids to smooth over and Congress gets to have his way with him, because he is a mess of a man and makes mistakes, and makes them loud.

If Pence is allowed to take his place, Pence will not make the same mistakes.

Pence is a career politician. He’s well-spoken. He’s relatively attractive. His positions are clear and well-established. He has a law degree. He’s on the conservative end of Republicans, but he’s a committed member of the party. In everything that made Trump unpopular among Republicans as well as Democrats, Pence is the opposite.

There were jokes comparing Trump to Emperor Palpatine, and a good rebuttal of them. Compared to Pence, Trump is Jar-Jar Binks. Pence is Palpatine.

Trump is wildly unpopular because both liberals and the Republican establishment don’t like him. He’s ugly and crass and obviously incompetent, he’s the perfect figurehead to rally against.

Pence is not. Pence is dangerous in different ways, and one of the worst is that he won’t make nearly as good a symbol for his opponents. If Trump gets kicked out, we have to keep protesting, even as people try to say that we got what we wanted, that everything can go back to normal.

Remember this, when the impeachment happens, whether it’s a month from now or three years. Trump is bad. Pence might be worse.

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Remember that time when Pence made a last minute decision to not sign an application for a grant that would have made preschool in Indiana more accessible and help fix our crumbling infrastructure?

Remember that stern letter that a bunch of big businesses in Indiana wrote to Pence because he signed a law that was discouraging business from both within and without the state of Indiana?

Oh, and that time that Pence caused an HIV outbreak in rural Indiana because the only clinic that did HIV testing was a Planned Parenthood and his fixation on defunding reproductive rights caused it to close- even though that particular clinic didn’t even offer abortion services?

And then there’s the “Pence Must Go” signs all over central Indiana…

And who could forget the time that he planned on using taxpayer dollars to fund a news outlet because he couldn’t control the negative image surrounding him from the press.

What about the time that the FEC had to rewrite laws to prevent challenging candidates from using campaign funds for personal use because Mike Pence used 30% of his campaign funds on mortgage payments and golf tournaments?

And who else remembers when they were giving states a chance to individually tailor their Clean Energy laws to fit the needs of the state and Pence just said ‘no’ and didn’t offer any alternative?

Hey, what about that time that Pence stated that condoms were ‘too modern’ of a solution to HIV and STI prevention and that abstinence was the best choice?

Remember also that 49% of pregnancies in Indiana are unintended, and that out of 1000 teenagers, an average of 49 will become pregnant before they age of 19. And that STI cases have reached record rates for the state of Indiana.

Oh! Remember when Pence went against the advice of legal professionals and signed a good number of laws that mean that you are classified as a drug dealer (whether proven or not) if you are found with a certain quantity of drugs in your possession, and increased the minimum sentence to ten years- even when it was argued by many legal sources that the best way to combat drug use is rehabilitation and not incarceration?

How about the time that he campaigned heavily against raising the minimum wage to match neighboring states, even though an overwhelming majority of Hoosiers polled said that they support a $9/hr wage and approximately 93000 residents of the state bring home less than $300 a week?

Or that time he stripped the office of state superintended of all its meaningful power because he didn’t like who won. (More.)

That person being Glenda Ritz, who by the way, received more votes than Pence.

Of course, I thought that it needed no mention, but who could ever forget the national embarrassment that was the RFRA laws, which allowed business-owners to refuse service to people if they felt ‘religiously burdened,’ which essentially boiled down to discriminating people who are part of the LGBTQ community.

And you know I’d love to rant about Mike Pence all day long, but for those of you who want a more comprehensive list of how incompetent he’s been as our governor, this one sums it up pretty nicely and has sources!

Oh, but don’t take my word for it: here’s another masterpost of all this and more.

And just in case you thought he was done being awful- how about the time that Pence and Trump made a visit to Louisiana despite the fact that politicians were asked NOT to visit the flooded areas for essentially photo ops because its a further strain on resources? Meanwhile, South Bend IN is currently experiencing a flood where a visit would not be a negative impact the resources, but a photo op in Baton Rouge is more important somehow.

Also seemingly less important than an unwelcome photo op is the soil in East Chicago, IN- which has a lead content 30 times what is considered unsafe levels for children to be in contact with. This comes from a man whose initial decision not to run for President was based on his ‘need to focus on his home state.’

Of course, everyone remembers how the RFRA, a law that was written in the spirit of LGBTQ discrimination, was strongly protested but signed anyway. No one could have possibly guessed that people would try to use it to justify child abuse- except for literally every person who protested.

But to put a little more levity in this post, Purvi Patel’s sentence of feticide has been reduced to ‘child neglect’ and she’s out of jail. So that’s good news!

Of course, injustices like these haven’t stopped radical anti-choice laws from being signed in during the entire run of the controversy.

Remember how he opposed the Matt Shepard Hate Crimes Act??? (I can’t add a link bc I’m on mobile but this is true)

Don’t worry, I got you.

“The president has used his position as commander in chief to advance a radical social agenda, when he should have used it to advance legislation that would unequivocally support our troops.” Because, you know… these things actually correlate. His complaint was also that this would curb freedom of speech.

Let us remember that the Matt Shepard Hate Crimes Act is simply: Conceived as a response to the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., the measure expands the 1969 United States federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

So we can reasonably deduce here that our fluffy Q-tip of a Vice President thinks that the literal murder of people based on their gender identity, disability, and sexual orientation is okay under the First Amendment.

What about the time he made same-sex couples applying for marriage licenses into a felony, punishable up to 18 months in jail and a $10,000 fine, because that’s how you get supervillain street cred.

Here’s a screenshot from his website from 2001 on his policies, via the Wayback Machine:

That last bullet-point basically means it was publicly part of his agenda to take money from HIV-related programs and put it towards conversion therapy, which is scientifically proven to not work- and result more in PTSD related conditions and most often suicide. All leading medical professionals say 0/10, do not recommend.

And that was over a decade ago. But Pence still refuses to answer questions about his stance on the subject of gay conversion therapy.