The first presidential primaries are only 14 months away. Who’s going to be the Republican pick?
At the online Inkling Marketplace, people are already placing bets on the outcome of the 2012 Republican presidential nomination race. Bets are constrained to a value between $0 and $100. When a GOP candidate is nominated, a shares predicting his or her nomination will be cashed in at a value of $100, and the rest of the bets lose all value. Until then, people can trade their bets on a market. By the law of supply and demand, the bets that more people think will pay off will go for a higher price. The trading value of a bet for a possible 2012 GOP presidential nominee is therefore an indicator of the likelihood people place on that candidate’s actual nomination the year after next.
In traders’ answer to the question, “Who will win the 2012 U.S. Republican Party presidential nomination,” there are 13 people whose shares have traded above a value of $1.00 some time in the past two months. Among them, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Pence and Tim Pawlenty have been consistently trading at the top. Mitch Daniels, Jim DeMint, Dirk Kempthorne, Ron Paul and Rick Perry have been pretty consistently near the bottom of the pack — although it’s important to remember that 2012 Republican candidate John McCain was placed down in that second tier for quite some time before he rose to the top of his party’s ticket.
Of these candidates, we’ve taken a look at Tim Pawlenty and Haley Barbour recently. But who’s this Mike Pence fellow?
His current spot as a member of the House of Representatives does not bode well for Mike Pence’s White House chances, at least if you believe that historical statistics constrain future events. The only President in the history of the United States to be elected President while occupying a seat in the the House of Representatives was James Garfield in the 1800s. Then again, at this time four years ago most pundits were comfortably telling viewers that Barack Obama didn’t have a shot at the presidency because Americans don’t elect Senators. Besides, Mike Pence is not any old member of the House. He’s Chair of the House Republican Conference, which places him in charge of Republicans’ online outreach and also puts him on TV news shows and in conservative think tanks’ press rooms a fair amount. It was in just such a press appearance earlier this month that Pence demanded President Barack Obama stalk the U.S. Constitution “like an obsessed lover.” Pence got into a bit of a spot earlier this year when the representative of a landlocked district spoke for “the American people”, claiming that concerns about oil spills didn’t really bother them. But is all publicity good publicity? Sarah Palin might say the answer is “yes.”
Apart from his position as a Republican Party official, Mike Pence also heads up not one but three political action committees that gather campaign contributions to his benefit. In the year to date, his Win Back America PAC has gathered $419,541.26 in campaign contributions and has distributed campaign contributions to 74 candidates for the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in return. Thanks to this “leadership committee,” Mike Pence is sending around electoral favors without spending his own money — and these favors can be cashed in when endorsement time comes around. According to Open Secrets, Mike Pence’s leadership PAC distributions to other candidates has doubled since the 2008 election season, indicating an increased interest in cultivating relationships of influence.
Meanwhile, the aptly named “Mike Pence Committee” and his other political committee, “People for Mike Pence, Inc.” have together taken in $2,533,889.82 and disbursed $2,012,734.97. This leaves Mike Pence with a campaign warchest of only a few hundred thousand dollars, but a long line of corporate PACs that are presumably ready to give again.
Mike Pence has attracted the positive attention of a number of conservatives this fall. George Will is still cleaning off his tongue from the fawning treatment he gave Pence yesterday; at the end of last month Pence brought a Michigan crowd to its feet with his call for a presidency based on submission of gay people to Christian supremacy. This is a call he’s made before.
You may not be too familiar with Mike Pence yet, but in the near future you probably will be.
…oh, great, now along with Bush and Palin we will have Pence Derangement Syndrome…..