Pence starts his own PAC

Roxxsmom said:

It's unprecedented for a VP to start a campaign for their own future presidency this early in a sitting president's first term. He's the only sitting vice president to start a political action committee.

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But.. but... but he's NOT RUNNING for president. He said so, and therefore it has to be true!

Well, the presidential candidate is decided by the primaries. The vice presidential candidate is appointed by the chosen presidential candidate AFTER the primaries. Even in my short time as a voter, I can remember primaries that have ended with speculation that the winner would choose their most popular rival as their vice president. (There were Dems hoping Barack would choose Hillary and Hillary, in turn, would choose Bernie, but in both cases their respective policies were too distinct from each other and the winning candidate went with someone else.)

I can't imagine Trump wanting someone on his ticket he thinks might try to upstage him, though. So while it may be ALLOWED, it's likely to backfire one way or another.

Now, as to whether Pence would be able to run as a third-party if he was somehow still allowed to run on Trump's ticket... Let me check the Constitution and get back to you, but I don't think it's specifically prohibited.

ETA: I was serious about checking the Constitution. The one that defines the Vice President's role and qualifications is the twelfth amendment. The only thing it says is that you must be eligible to be President, which is to say, 35 or older, natural-born citizen, have lived in the US at least 14 years (grabbed that list off Wikipedia instead of digging through Article II for it).

Oh, also, you can't be a treasonist. That seems like a given, but strangely it's outlined in the 14th Amendment (it was meant to block Confederate leaders from becoming President).

So as far as I can tell, yes. Because the modern form of elections was not in place the last time the Constitution sought to define this stuff, yes, Pence can run as both President and Vice President on separate tickets.

Who would back (financially) a candidate that was the VP on one ticket, but running as a 3rd party candidate? Running for president is fricken' expensive. Pence isn't hedging his bets in the "run both ways" arena. He's assuming Trump is going to be impeached and he's going to escape the poop-smear. The fact that he's done this tells you what he knows. The fact that he keeps supporting the president will be soundbites for days.

Bring it on.

Even assuming Trump makes it through the first term, I suspect nothing but sheer cussedness would make him want another. He'll be 80 or so at the end of it, and he's dragging his tail right now. He clearly hates everything about being president, except for the rallies. Hey, he could hold rallies for Pence and get the same adulation.

Of course, he may not be smart enough to figure out that if you hate being president, you should maybe not re-up for it.