Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for Donald Trump’s VP? She’s his true ideological mate

Some of us have been scrabbling around to find the ideal vice-presidential running mate for Donald Trump.

And we came up with, wait for it, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen . Now that The New York Times has reported that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez have reservations about running with Mr Trump, who would be a good fit?

Mr Trump’s team will have to look beyond the default Republican search parameters of sitting governors.

That’s where Ileana Ros-Lehtinen comes in. She’s ideal and we know this for a fact, because the Florida Congresswoman visited Haiti in March 2014 while we were there and seemed to be enormously demanding and opinionated.

Anyway, on a sliding scale of one to 10, Ms Ros-Lehtinen scores 10 on the following need-based criteria for a Donald Trump ticket. She is:

* a woman

* a Latino (albeit of Cuban rather than Mexican ethnicity)

* commanding enough to be able to get on with The Donald

* a Republican who served as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee for two years from 2011 (and thereby, presumably with some idea of foreign policy, which could balance Mr Trump’s television reality star-view of the world)

Additionally, Ms Ros-Lehtinen ticks some unexpected boxes, all of which could give a Trump ticket bragging rights. Consider the following, sourced from that great fount of deep research, Wikipedia:

* she was the first Latina to be elected to Congress

* she gave the first Republican response to the State of the Union address in Spanish in 2011, and gave the third in 2014

But I think what makes Ms Ros-Lehtinen truly a perfect match for Mr Trump is this: she’s as isolationist as him, voted against equal pay for women and believes that the UN is “an anti-Semitic organization”.

In February 2014, Slate was describing Ms Ros-Lehtinen’s record on women’s issues by quoting Marc Tracy at the New Republic: “It’s true that Ros-Lehtinen is a hardworking and accomplished woman, but she is also a woman who does everything in her power to make sure that other women’s hard work will not lead to similar accomplishments, as Tracy details. Ros-Lehtinen voted against equal-pay legislation; has a zero rating from NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws); and even voted to drain the previously uncontroversial Title X funding that is used primarily to help low-income women afford contraception, STI testing, and cancer screenings.”

Ms Ros-Lehtinen apparently wants legislation that would make it less likely that the US would continue to fund the UN (she wants extensive reform, which is a good idea except that these things take time and penny-pinching isolationism is not the answer.)

She wants the United States to withdraw from the UNHRC, as “Israel is the only country on the council’s permanent agenda, while abuses by rogue regimes like Cuba, China, and Syria are ignored”.

She’s absolutely perfect.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is Donald Trump’s true ideological mate.