Mike Drop

Mike Pence withdrew as a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, thus ending an accidental political career.  A politician so inept that he lost his first two House bids to an incumbent Democrat, Pence was elected only when the Republican incumbent representing his Indiana district in the House chose not to seek re-election.  Pence's career seemed moribund when he chose to run for a second term as governor of Indiana in 2016 and was seem as likely to lose when Trump selected him as vice presidential his running mate. 

That out of the way, I don't really want to harp on Pence any more because he's gotten enough of a raw deal already.  Yeah, sure, he put his values in a blind trust to support Trump, who was as amoral and blasphemous as Pence was not, but Pence did redeem himself when he refused to try to overturn the 2020 election once it became apparent to him that there was no legal way he could refuse the electoral votes of key states.  Yes, he looked for ways to do it legally, and he even consulted Dan Quayle on the issue, but he did the right thing after he exhausted all of the alternatives.  According to the late Winston Churchill, he's a typical American.

How, you ask, could I be so sympathetic to a right-wing, misogynistic, non-alcoholic-beer-drinking prude like Pence?  Two reasons.  First, Martin O'Malley got subjected to the same ridicule for his presidential run when he ended it in February 2016, and I'm still ticked off about that.  Second, even Martin O'Malley, unpopular as he was with the Democratic base, never had to worry about being hung by his detractors, which is how Pence ended his vice presidential tenure. 

Oh yeah, this isn't going to affect the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.  Even though Pence ostensibly bowed out to encourage other low-performing candidates to do the same and coalesce around one anti-Trump candidate, his support was too miniscule to help any other candidates or change the dynamics of the campaign.  But even if all but one of the candidates not named Donald by their mothers withdraw from the campaign tomorrow and got behind the last person standing in a united front against Trump, it's too late for that.  Trump has a majority of Republican voters in the primary and caucus polls - 59 percent, according to one survey - so even if the anti-Trump Republicans get behind one candidate, they've likely already lost.

Pence's withdrawal from the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, like Will Hurd's before, has further normalized what was once considered an anomaly back in 1987, when Gary Hart and Joe Biden quit their presidential campaigns - the act of presidential candidates ending their campaigns before the start of the primary/caucus voting.  And Hart and Biden quit that early because of scandal.  Mike Pence's only scandals were demonstrating fealty to Trump - and, in the eyes of MAGA Republicans, breaking that fealty when the price of fealty proved to be too high.