Is Trump going to be a figurehead or puppet?

So, take this with a grain of salt, but I came across this article suggesting that Trump plans to outsource many of his presidential responsibilities to his vice president, Mike Pence. Now, the article does not adequately substantiate such rumors, but I find this fairly plausible.

Trump, as I've written about before, has no idea what he's doing. He is either going to be a crazy unpredictable nut who is totally incompetent on policy, or he is going to outsource his responsibilities to advisors.

Considering how the republican convention so far has been standard republican craziness, not Trump's unique brand if craziness, I have to wonder if Trump himself falling in line with the Republican establishment. Considering how the party seems united behind Trump, and are carrying on as if he were anyone else, it is possible that some sort of deal was reached behind he scenes.

This does not look particularly out of place from what I heard elsewhere. If I recall he also planned to outsource his supreme court picks to the Heritage Foundation or some other similar conservative think tank. So this idea that someone who has no idea what they're doing is going to outsource important policy he does not have the qualifications to make judgments on is not unrealistic.

What I will say though, is that if this is true, we are going to end up with your standard republican bullcrap if he wins, just with a more vulgar mouthpiece. Pence is the whole package: fiscal conservatism, neocon foreign policy, social/religious conservatism. He's a perfect republican standard bearer and is competent enough to actually govern on these ideals.

Republicans who think you're going to get anything different than you always get these days, be warned. Trump is a demagogue. His idea of "making America great again" is wholly rhetorical, and you're just going to end up with more of the same. Don't fall for it. Trump himself may be anti establishment, but he has a ton of establishment guys surrounding him who will be making policy behind the scenes while he shoots his loud mouth off and looks cool. You're just getting standard republican policy with different marketing to it.