I had to completely remove the door's interior panel just to reach three idiotic nuts that attach the moronic thing to the God-darned door!

They have all been that way since the advent of the streamlined mirrors, the ones that are on all cars. Every make does it the same way.

 

I've often wondered if you could get away with that. Nice to hear you can. How short is short? What is a typical modern car's standby current draw?

Most are under 100mA with a parasitic load near 50mA being normal with all systems in shutdown (this might take hours after the key is off in modern cars).

https://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us/experience/2010/12/what-normal-parasitic-draw