Pence Reminds Conservatives What We Lost By Nominating Trump

Finally, after what seemed like months — I felt glad to be a Republican again.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence mopped the floor against Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, not because Pence did anything, but because Pence had the patience and the poise to let Kaine come to him.

Allow me to revel for just a moment in the fact that Kaine’s Jesuit-trained casuistry came right up to the surface towards the very tail-end of the debate with regards to life, just as predicted.  Even the form of the casuistry was just magnificent — exactly the willy-nilly parsing that pro-lifers such as Pence sniff out, detect, and then demolish.

As for the rest of the debate, Kaine’s constant interruptions were nothing short of an embarrassment.   It didn’t work for Trump.  Why on God’s green earth did Kaine think it would work for him?

Here’s the problem — what everyone saw Tuesday night was the real Tim Kaine.  The thin-skinned and arrogant governor who produced an illegal tax hike in 2007 and left office encouraging the largest tidal wave for Virginia Republicans in modern history by 2009.  If not for the Obama effect in 2012, former Virginia Governor George Allen would be in the U.S. Senate today — Kaine would still be doing what he did as governor: nothing at all.

Something to note here as we finally see an exposition of all four major party candidates, and Libertarian Party nominees Johnson and Weld by extension.  What the American people are looking for in 2016 really isn’t solutions, nor are they looking for a smooth talker, and explainer-in-chief, or any of the above.

They are looking for authenticity.

Trump, for all his failings, is authentic (the “say what you will… at least it’s an ethos” defense).  Authenticity without any moral underpinning at all… but it brushed aside 16 Republican contenders and is competing with Hillary Clinton at the moment.

What Kaine failed to deliver on was a modicum of authenticity.  Instead, Kaine came across as a scold, a bully, anything but the nice guy the media panned him to be.

Pence by comparison was a paragon of authenticity.  Not as bombastic as his running mate, but one got the impression of a kind, thoughtful, and measured politician.

…precisely the opposite of what one expects from most VP debates.

For as damaging as the first round of the Clinton/Trump debates were, the outcome of the Kaine/Pence debate probably undid all the damage and then some (including waving people off of Trump’s deplorable comments about veterans suffering from PTSD).

…and yet.

If Pence were leading the ticket, I’d be a full-throated supporter.  Pence is everything Trump is not: calm, confident, patient, conservative.  Watching the debate, I genuinely felt proud to see a pro-life Republican stand firm and defend — and not obfuscate — his pro-life convictions in the face of an opportunist who sold out his beliefs as Virginia governor and sold them out further vis a vis the Hyde Amendment when he received the VP nod.

The problem remains that those principles are in service to an unprincipled man, one who is unfit to be the leader of a free people and well suited to pander to the dictates of a mob.

Pence may have served to cauterize the bleeding, saving a sinking ship for his captain.  Yet the core problem still remains — and this is perhaps the most damning part of the entire debate: Pence reminded many conservatives about what we believe and what we have lost by nominating Trump.

I dare say we will not find such an exposition of conservative pro-life values from Donald J. Trump.  That is the saddest realization of them all.

UPDATE:  Highlight of the debate, when Pence responded to Kaine’s interrogative as to whether or not women should be trusted to kill a baby with federal and state taxpayer dollars with their own medical decisions nee abortion on demand.  Pence responds:

Society will be judged by how it defends its most vulnerable – the aged, the infirm, the disabled, and the unborn.

Great line.  Tell me how Trump exemplifies this in the same way Pence does?

…and there’s your problem, because we all know Trump doesn’t exemplify that line for a moment.