GOP Nominee reverts to comfort zone.

We already knew Bill Schuette’s choice for Lt. Governor Lisa Posthumus Lyons’ words:

“Demeaning women and disrespecting others is unacceptable behavior. I am raising four kids to stand up for others, to love their neighbor, to exemplify respect and integrity. I do not tolerate anything less from my kids, and I will not tolerate anything less from someone who wants to be President of the United States,” she wrote in 2016.

She wrote that she had remained quiet until then out of respect to voters who had chosen Trump as the nominee, “But it is clear that Donald Trump has not earned my respect or my vote.”

Apparently, she didn’t give that vote to him either.

This morning’s radio audio has Tim Skubick asking if she voted for him.  She replied with “I support President Trump and the policies that are coming out of his administration. ” or some other variation of this, but for the three times she was asked, three times she avoided directly answering the question.

Clearly, she didn’t vote for the president in the general election of 2016.  It is understandable that in the primary other Republicans might get the vote of the flag bearer, or flag bearer jr.  Hell, we all had our favorites.  But when the choice in the general means electing a Republican or promoting a dedicated criminal enterprise, it seems a person of reasonable intelligence might choose the former.

That being said, there are other issues that are problematic with her selection.  When the choice of a running mate is made, it is supposed to bring something new into the campaign. Typically it helps to draw new resources, new troops, and new alliances to defeat the ‘enemy’ in the general.

The incestuous politics of Lansing grows trees with few branches.  Arguably, choosing from those close to you, whom you know and trust, etc, would provide certain protections, and safety.  You know what you are getting, and you don’t worry about conflicting campaign rhetoric. But ..

This is #WAR for crying out loud.

And we need soldiers along with a few more friends on the battlefield.

Imagine if John McCain would have chosen Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski over Sarah Palin.  He would have lost by an additional 20 points in the ‘defining election of the century’ in which the first black man was named president. Some might argue because That team lost, that this argument is weak.  We should remember that no Republican would have won that race. Not that time.

McCain could have been humiliated even further if left to his own swamp critter participation.  The same pool of donors, the same milquetoast lack of conservative philosophy and no energized Palin (tea party) base to go to the front lines, it would have been a hoot.

In this particular case however, Bill Schuette makes a choice from his own comfortable circle to augment his campaign. Unfortunately, it couldn’t happen at a worse time.  Not because Gretchen Whitmer is a stellar candidate (she is not), but because the record turnout of Michigan democrats in the primary looks suspiciously like the 2002 election when Lisa’s dad did absolutely zero to energize the GOP base.

Reaching out to the Grass roots would have been a far better choice.  A choice of Mary Sears, Angela Rigas, Lana Theis, etc.. (a few I could think of)  pick would have satisfied what appears to be the need for an XX chromosome candidate.  These types of choices would have energized the now lost principled voters, who while probably voting for the GOP choice, will expend their limited efforts to campaign or advocate for others in lower level races.

Add to this a slew of progressive efforts to amend our constitution, and a failure of the Michigan Supreme court to protect it, it seems there is a bit of a problem.

So are we looking at the lost decade of Granholm redux?

We can only hope that the efforts to support the US Senate campaign efforts of John James, and some of the county wide campaign efforts will reverse-coattail for the Republican pick.

Or that the person who didn’t vote for Trump would decline to participate.

For the good of the party.

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