Only once in American history has a president been forced from office by scandal, when Richard Nixon resigned amid Watergate. Ford assumed the presidency and sparked controversy by pardoning Nixon, a move that may have cost him the 1976 election but one that historians have since praised.
With Trump swamped by self-inflicted scandals, Republicans find solace in the man waiting in the wings.
The scandals clouding Trump’s presidency — including, most recently, his firing of FBI Director James Comey, his alleged leak of classified information to Russian officials, and reports that he urged Comey to drop an investigation into a top aide — have raised once more the possibility that
Trump could be pushed aside and replaced by Vice President Mike Pence.
The still far-fetched proposition of removing Trump from office has increasing appeal to Republicans who are growing weary of defending Trump and are alarmed by his conduct in office. But such whispers are cringe-worthy for Pence and his aides, who have made an art of not upstaging the mercurial president.
Pence’s press secretary declined to comment for this article.
Erick Erickson, a conservative pundit who was a strong Never Trumper but then pledged to give the president a chance, wrote on Wednesday that
Republicans should abandon the president because they “have no need for him with Mike Pence in the wings.”
And conservative New York Times op-ed writer Ross Douthat, argued that
abandoning Trump now should be easier because someone competent is waiting in the wings. “Hillary Clinton will not be retroactively elected if Trump is removed, nor will Neil Gorsuch be unseated,” Douthat wrote in Wednesday’s Times.
Almost like a reminder of Pence’s political ambitions, news broke on Wednesday that Pence had formed a new leadership political action committee called the Great America Committee.
It is unusual for a vice president to form his own PAC, as the vice president would traditionally merge his political operation with the Republican National Committee.
A spokesman confirmed the existence of the new committee and said it is being overseen by Marty Obst and Nick Ayers, two former Pence campaign aides and close confidants of the vice president.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/17/mike-pence-president-trump-238525
