Note to Pence: The economy trumps all

When Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson wisely refused to sign the state's new "religious freedom" law and returned it to the legislature for repairs, you had to wonder why Mike Pence, Indiana's rattled governor,   didn't do   it sooner before some business and sports world giants  broke down his door as he sputtered for  conflicting answers.

In Hutchinson's case, it was Wal-Mart, the state's biggest employer, along with Little
Rock's Regional  Chamber of Commerce, and Convention and Visitors Bureau that jerked the deal from his desk after he first said he would sign it.

In both states, as well as others that might be trolling, the issue was the same:

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

What Pence painfully learned  in the age of hyper-communications is that he could be instantly rocketed   from his safe chair back home in Indiana to a broken national figure  who admitted that he had fumbled his interview by ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

He was completely unprepared - a governor, for Heaven's sake! -  for his political calamity. Now, despite his own protest that he meant no harm to LGBT's, he was betrayed by his 2000 congressional campaign website, by these damning words:

"Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexual's [sic] as a 'discrete and insular minority' entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and minorities.'"

Some things never change.