Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is, as well all know, in trouble. A lot of trouble. Ever since he signed the "religious freedom" bill that opens the door to discrimination against gay customers, he has been dealing with a firestorm of public criticism and ridicule and, even more ominously, major business boycotts, cancellations and, perhaps most crippling of all, the prospect of sporting events avoiding Indiana like the plague in the wake of the law's passage. (In Indiana, a state where basketball is practically a religion unto itself, that prospect is especially harsh.) It's no wonder, then, that Pence is scrambling madly for cover and pledging to "clarify" things and assure people that Indiana is not a haven for bigots.
It's not going well, as anyone who watched his appearance this morning on This Week knows:
In the interview, Pence dodged a question from George Stephanopoulos about whether the law would allow florists and bakers to deny their wedding services to gay couples by citing their religious beliefs. He also twice dodged a yes-or-no question on whether he believed it should be legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians under state law.
Dodge, dodge, dodge, that's all he can do. Pence is, right now, a cornered animal, unable to move in any direction and trying desperately for any kind of spin that can save his miserable ass. Unfortunately, none is coming. But how did he end up like this? How did he wind up in such a miserable and potentially ruinous position? The answer, my friends, is simple:
He's an idiot.
Pence is essentially Dan Quayle. A more articulate Dan Quayle, yes, mainly due to his past as a talk radio host, but in truth, he's as rock stupid as Mr. Potatoe. It's been apparently for years. Back in 2008, Matthew Yglesias explained it in devastating detail:
There are very few members of congress with whom I’ve ever had the opportunity to discuss a substantive matter of public policy. But as it happens, one of them — the one with whom I’ve had the second-longest exchange — is Mike Pence (R-IN) who I’ve seen on television today repeatedly discussing the Republican Study Group’s “plan” for the financial crisis. And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at. He’s almost stupid enough to work in cable television.
More:
Specifically, way back in 2005 I got to talk to him about Social Security privatization at a Heritage Foundation event. Obviously, I have my perspective on this and conservatives have theirs. But Pence had a truly peculiar idea. His idea was that the government ought to reassure people about the risks of losses under a privatization plan by having the government guarantee a minimum annuity level pegged to what’s promised under current law. This plan would, according to Pence, save money relative to current law because most people’s stock/bond portfolio would outperform the level needed to provide such an annuity, so the government would only need to kick in for a minority of people. I said I thought this would create a moral hazard problem for bad investors. He had no idea what I was talking about. Seemed unfamiliar with the term. Then I tried to explain it to him, I said that if the government guaranteed to bail you out in case of losses, then investors would make riskier investments and the number of people who need bailing out would rise. He just flat-out denied this, said the presence or absence of a guaranteed bailout would have no impact on investor behavior. He seemed unaware that some portfolios are riskier than others, or that higher average rates of return are associated with greater risk taking. He didn’t know anything at all, in short, about investing, financial markets, or, seemingly, the basic terms of public policy. And yet there he was speaking on the topic at Heritage. He’s a total fraud.
You want more proof? How about
this incident from 2009 when he tried to get Hillary Clinton to criticize Obama over a meeting with Hugo Chavez and Hillary promptly took him to the woodshed. (At the end, Pence looks like a chastised little kid sent to his room by his mom for being bad.)
So yes, an idiot. An idiot now caught in a trap of his own making and with seemingly no way out. Watch him squirm, folks. And enjoy.