At lunch today friends were discussing Donald Trump’s uninspiring choice of yet another older white guy as running mate. I said “He should have chosen Michelle Rhee.” What do folks think? She’s 10 years younger than Pence. She is not a man. She is not white. She has experience as a teacher and as an education bureaucrat. Of all of the things that the government does, running schools is near the top of the list of stuff that matters to a large bloc of voters (i.e., those with children and grandchildren in K-12). I would still be pessimistic about Trump’s chances but at least with Rhee as a running mate he would not put potential voters to sleep.
Readers: What do you think? Could Michelle Rhee have given Trump a bigger boost than Pence?
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Any non-white male would have been a bad idea. The gestalt of the campaign is we’re done with such things as tokenism.
Michelle Malkin, perhaps, but what makes you think Michelle Rhee would want to run with Trump?
Your wikipedia link says she’s a democrat.
No. You need someone with political experience. Furthermore, she is hated by anyone involved in public education.
LOL an Asian woman? You must be joking Phil, Asian women are the most hated group of people in the world, right up there with Jewish men!
When the media says they “want equality for women,” what they are REALLY saying is they want special privileges for WASPS and their ilk, and lip-service equal rights for all of the non-threatening (black, Hispanic, etc.) subgroups.
Jeez. So the guy wanted to fund conversion therapy instead of hiv/aids research/prevention, and led bills to defeat the horrible efforts to ensure people can breathe clean air and try and prevent the fate of Venus on earth?
I guess he decided he could not really branch out of his marketing, and rolled all in to get the support of the base.
If Trump loses(barring a few catastrophic gaffes or reveal of a literal skeleton in the closet with Hillary, she will. Hard to beat the email scandal at this point though, so if shes still leading I can’t see her fall) I hope your blog post gets posted with all media figures saying “Maybe this was really boring from the getgo and we were all dumb”
No. Michelle Rhee is far too smart and elitist. She wouldn’t do it anyway. Trump knows his base, disaffected whites (the Rolling Thunder crowd). Surprising to me is how many golf buddies are willing to support him openly, Carl Icahn, et al. Pence is good VP pick, for Trump. The blinding glitz and incestuous knot of Trump’s tribe should be able to get this Midwest rube to dance to Trump’s tune. As card carrying member of American Taliban (Evangelical Catholic) Pence is not so good for general election appeal. You can only dupe some of the people some of the time..
Not sure why there’s such hatred for old white guys. For centuries civilization advanced and our lives improved because of old white guys. Since we’ve diminished their place in the world, every thing seems to be going to hell. Bring back the old white guy.
>For centuries civilization advanced and our lives improved because of old white guys.
Well, for just as many centuries and more people were subjugated under old white guys too. And young white guys. And where you live, old/young (other race) too.
What I am concerned about is the cognitive declines related to aging. By age 70, ones memory and fluid IQ measures are quite lower then at age 20. Why are the two front runners for president 70 years old?
Reagan was the other oldest person to take office, and he got visible dementia by his second term. There are a lot more minor, but very significant decreases that happened before it became visible.
The fundamental value of Pence is the direct appeal to the evangelical Christian element of the GOP. Pence has proven his true believer status over and over on such issues as abortion, planned parenthood, gay rights/marriage, etc. Add to that his mainstream republican values on things like voter ID, lower taxes for the wealthy, membership in the Koch congress, and it was clearly a no brainer. The biggest challenge will be can Pence keep his mouth shut on issues where he and Drumpf disagree like immigration or will he continually go off script.
To answer your question: because of Sarah Palin… he already has one Melanie on his (“short-fingered vulgarian’s”) hands.
Everyone missed the more important point. Conservatives and Republicans consider education to be a state and local issue, not a federal one. Many Republicans have stated that they would like to eliminate the federal Department of Education. From this point of view Michelle Rhee might make a good governor, not a vice president.