Open Letter to Don and Ron

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Yes, a great letter! Jillian also posted this.
Trump and DeSantis must lead us out of this disaster.

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This is excellent advice.
The way things stand now, I don’t see it happening any other way. A Trump DeSantis ticket by popular acclamation is a no brainer. Again, as it stands now, for DeSantis to seriously challenge Trump with negative campaign adds and so forth (as feared by Susan Vass) would spell political suicide by Ron, and also possibly for Don if he responded to Ron’s hypothetical attacks. I don’t see anything of the kind to be likely. DeSantis is young, and not irrationally ambitious. His speech at Turning Point a few days ago was very impressive, and a model for Republican leadership henceforth.

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But I think DeSantis is needed as governor of Florida. His enormous talent would be wasted if he was VP. Not a nice office to hold at all!

Trump will choose another VP.

DeSantis could still be Trump’s successor.

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Sorry. I wasn’t aware Jillian also posted it.

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That’s okay, Cogito. It’s just further proof that we have similar taste in many ideas.

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I think you could be right. But if DeSantis had a reliable DeSantis-like replacement for his governorship, four years as Executive Officer (XO, Navy term) as VP in the second Trump administration could give him a Panopticon-like advantage for continuing the swamp-draining. And you’re right, he could be successor without that position and experience, but I think the position in DC could help as a more effective successor.

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I heard on the Clay and Buck Show (Rush Limbaugh’s old timeslot) that the 12th Amendment says the candidates for president and vice president have to be residents of different states.

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Found this:

America 101: Can the president and vice president be from the same state?

  • • Sarah Pruitt *
  • • Updated: Aug 31, 2018 Original: Jul 12, 2016 *

*There are many misconceptions about the rules of a president choosing their running mate. There’s no law or regulation against a president and vice president of the United States being from the same state. The reason why some people mistakenly believe such a prohibition exists comes down to a particular aspect of the Electoral College system laid out in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. *
*Article II states: “The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.” *
Under the original system, electors did not distinguish between candidates for the nation’s top two offices; the candidate with the most votes became president, while the runner-up became vice president. The 12th Amendment, adopted in 1804 after two chaotic elections, mandated that electors cast separate ballots for president and vice president. However, the rule preventing an elector from voting for two people from his home state remained in effect under the new system.
*In most elections, this quirk in the system wouldn’t even matter. In 2008, Barack Obama could have chosen a running mate from his home state of Illinois in either 2008 or 2012 with no adverse effect; the same goes for Ronald Reagan in 1980 or ’84, George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992 or ‘96. *
But if an election turns out to be particularly close, the rule could potentially come into play. It almost did in the notoriously contentious election of 2000. When Texas Gov. George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney as his running mate on the Republican ticket, Cheney had been living and voting and paying taxes for five years in Texas. Shortly before the election, however, Cheney obtained a Wyoming driver’s license and put his Dallas home on the market. (He had a vacation home in Wyoming, which is the state he had formerly represented in the U.S. Congress.) Good thing for him he did: The Bush-Cheney ticket ended up winning with 271 electoral votes—just a slim five-vote margin—over Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, a total they certainly wouldn’t have hit without Texas’ 32 votes.

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