Lotsa Litmus

 So there's this thing called the litmus test. Not the literal one in which we use litmus to test for acidity, but the way we choose candidates. Before the events that resulted in the former game show host getting an unauthorized ear piercing, leaving one of his followers dead, there was this matter of who would be the twice-impeached former president's running mate. 

A lot of names were bandied about. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who also served as ambassador to the United Nations in the previous administration. She didn't pass the test to which I previously alluded because she had the temerity to run against her former boss in a series of Republican primaries a few months ago. She won the one they held in Washington, DC. She also won in Vermont. She was, ever so briefly, the second place to the man she said was "unhinged" and "not qualified" to run our country. 

Ms. Haley will not be on the Republican ticket this November. 

Neither will any of the other folks who ran campaigns for a year or so just to see their momentum crushed by the inevitable that has been and continues to be MAGA. People whose names you might recall, like Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ted Cruz will be on the outside looking in as the Grand Old Party heads into the fall with all the potential distractions that might come from anybody who might possibly outshine their Chosen One eliminated. What once looked like a hot ticket, Kristi Noem found out that being unapologetic about shooting puppies isn't the look her party is after. 

So when the nod went to J.D. Vance, junior senator from Ohio, it became clear that the best path was the one that wouldn't ruffle any feathers or upset anyone with pets. His election to the Senate in 2022 was his first public office, which means he has only a couple years of laundry to sort. He did write a best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy which was turned into a feature film directed by Ron Howard. A Ron Howard directed film that has the distinction of being the lowest rated of all his movies on Metacritic. But maybe that's Opie Cunningham's fault, not J.D. Back in 2016, when he was an author and not a politician, he called himself a "Never Trump" guy. During this time, he could not be described as "a fan." 

But things change, and sometimes to get ahead in this hurly-burly world of politics, you need to be a leopard with Velcro spots. By 2020, those spots spelled out MAGA, and he voted for the only former president to be convicted of a felony. By the time he climbed onto his own campaign bus in 2022, he was ready to whatever it took to gain favor from the MAGAMaster, who was more than willing to endorse him as long as he played his role well. This might be why another former Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney once said, "I don't know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D. Vance." 

But maybe the most important thing to come out of Senator Vance's mouth in terms of qualifying him to be the GOP Vice Presidential Candidate would be this: insistence that if he would have been vice president back in 2020, he would not have certified the election results. Like the guy who was threatened with lynching because he did. 

Careful what you wish for there, J.D. That's a lot of litmus.