Trumpās Failing Coronavirus Response is Standard Issue Republicanism in 2020
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āHeās got a certain talent for this,ā President Donald Trump said of Vice President Mike Pence when entrusting him with the response to the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis. Penceās perpetual grimace is the new face of the U.S. response to the coronavirus, after a
chaotic week when the White House health teamās
internecine squabbles and revolving-door corruption got a bit too public for Trumpās comfort. GOP operatives are likely relieved that their āadult in the roomā has taken over. After all, Pence may be a fundamentalist zealot, but he is at least an actual ānormalā policy-maker.
But a Pence-led response is dangerous, not in spite of, but precisely because he is a typical Republican. His
coronavirus task force ā which includes several Pence loyalists ā is not particularly Trumpian. Its members are long-time political operatives, some of whom even have medical degrees. For the most part, their problem is not incompetence. Itās that they apply their competence and considerable resources in exactly the way a ānormalā Republican administration would: protection for the powerful, callousness for the afflicted, and a special disdain for the āother.ā In the Pence coronavirus task force, we have a clear window into what a Pence presidency would look like. The answer should scare you.