Chatter saying Pence may resign since the Flynn flip

[karynnj]

185. I would imagine Pence resigning ONLY if Mueller has solid cause to charge him and offers that

as the cost of no charges. Note this is a case where we are assuming that Mueller will at that point have evidence to take down Pence. Consider 2 possibilities: 1) He knows that Trump himself is very very vulnerable. Note that by stepping down at that point, he would be giving up a very real chance to be President. 2) He views Trump as likely to survive as he was protected from any direct illegal action AND as postulated above Mueller does have a solid case on Pence.

I suspect that IF Pence is in danger, Trump is too - as he is reckless and he had a very chaotic inexperienced team that would not have had the sense to insure that nothing tracked back to Trump. So, we would most likely be in possibility 1. The choice for him - risk trial, conviction and jail by not making a deal OR taking a deal where he steps down agreeing to some minor charge with no prison time.

If that happened, President Trump is the one who would nominate someone and the Senate would have to confirm him or her. Assuming this happens in 2018, that would be a Senate with either 51 or 52 Republicans. Confirmation would place some constraint on the choice - but as we saw yesterday and in the Obama years, it might not be a significant constraint. Nixon picked the House Minority Leader, Gerald Ford, who was a pretty bland, non controversial choice. However, where Nixon was a criminal (worse than we knew at that time given that he blew up the 1968 peace negotiations just to win election), he also had a rational, functional side that Trump may not have.

Given that Trump has to pick, I assume we can eliminate anyone he sees as having criticized him - which eliminates almost all serious Republicans - like Romney, Jebb, Corker etc might be eliminated by Trump. This might be too simplistic as he now appears to be BFF with Lindsey Graham, who was one of the toughest critics early on in the primaries. One of the many things that are weird about Trump is we do not know whether he really has an ideological value. If you look at the choices he has made for the cabinet, he has found people the Senate confirmed. At that point, we are at a crisis point - as we were when Nixon picked Ford. There would be a major effort to get someone who could help the country move forward.