Will Donald Dump Pence? - Updated

Steve Schmidt took a break from commentating/punditing to work for Howard Schultz while he pondered running for president. Ultimately Schultz said no, which means that Steve is back to his old job, and he had some interesting things to say on Morning Joe this morning. The topic was Nikki Haley's new book and her ambitions to be Vice President. Not in 2024, next year. Here's how Steve sees it:

"She wants to be Vice President, she wants to be Vice President on the Republican ticket in 2020. I think there's an overwhelming chance that Trump will dump Pence to put Nikki Haley on the ticket."

Willie Geist: "Really. Why do you say that?"

Schmidt: "He has an enormous problem with women, suburban women particularly. He's entirely transactional, loyalty is a one-way street, and so she's clearly angling for the job and when you look at the politics of it, she would serve his immediate political interests in a way that Pence can't. So I would suggest that he's going to be gone and she'll be in. I think this book's about that."

Thoughts: In 2008, Schmidt was a top adviser to John McCain's campaign and was a key part of the decision to put Sarah Palin on the ticket. The McCain brain trust thought Palin, as a woman, might attract some of Hillary Clinton's voters. Wrong. Way wrong. As I've said here before, even if Palin had turned out to be a lot smarter than she is, there's no way Hillary's Democratic/liberal/progressive voters would vote for someone with Palin's far-right ideology. I believe there's a similar dynamic today. Women who don't like Donald are not going to be impressed, distracted or fooled by someone who's as closely aligned with him as Haley is.

For what it's worth, in August Haley herself shot down such talk:

Enough of the false rumors. Vice President Pence has been a dear friend of mine for years. He has been a loyal and trustworthy VP to the President. He has my complete support. ❤️🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/waPyQjC8Eb

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) August 21, 2019

... but hey, a girl can change her mind.

Steve Schmidt is also not a fan of Mike Pence and that may be influencing his view of Pence's place in the world. In this clip from May, 2018, he calls Pence the house butler at Mar-a-Lago and a titanic fraud:

"He is a titanic ...  & I mean TITANIC fraud" - @SteveSchmidtSES on VP Pence
w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/nckqyVTBpb

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) May 10, 2018

Finally, and this is a nitpick, but I don't like the subtitle of Haley's new book: "Defending America with Grit and Grace". Saying that someone is doing something "with grit and grace" is usually meant as a compliment, i.e., something you say about someone else. It's grating to see her describing herself that way. 

Update on Friday morning. There was a time when Nikki Haley wasn't a fan of Donald:

This is amazing. At the end of an interview in which she pulled out all the stops to defend Trump, Wolf Blitzer played Haley a bunch of clips of her trashing Trump during the 2016 campaign and asked, "what happened since then?"

"Nothing happened since then!" she says. 🙃 pic.twitter.com/L1mLuqV1gm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 14, 2019