A new story in flux offers a revealing look at Pence’s character.
For the more than five years, I have many ideas about the adage that is paraphrased (and mistakenly attributed): “The only obligatory thing for evil to triumph is that intelligent men do nothing. To me, this largely explains how President Donald Trump controlled to hijack the Republican Party; there just weren’t enough Dan Quayles (yes, you read that right) and too much Mike Pences.
We now know much more about what Pence did, and what he didn’t, when an insurrectionary mob literally tried to impose itself in the halls of Congress.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t have the former vice president on my bingo card How to Save Democracy, but thanks to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s upcoming book, “Danger,” we now know a lot more about what Pence did: and what he didn’t do, as an insurrectionary mob literally tried to force itself into the halls of Congress. The “danger” has not yet come out, so we rely on small extracts of extracts and miniatures. But a story circulating gives a revealing look at Pence’s Character.
Desperate for a mechanism that would allow Pence to cancel the election in favor of his boss, Pence allegedly called Quayle, also of Indiana, for advice. According to the book, Quayle permanently shut down Pence. Mike, you don’t have flexibility in that. Nothing. Zero. Forget it. Order. “
The vice president of the United States asked that someone give him permission to preside over the total collapse of our democratic process. The fact that Pence sought the recommendation of Quayle, whose term in the White House of George HWBush is a political auction, the total scenario even more absurd.
Over the years, Pence has been portrayed as a reluctant hostage or a passive observer of Trump’s madness. He joked about an “elf on a shelf” and mocked his clashes with flies. But the fact is that Mike Pence has been as damaging to democracy as Donald Trump, perhaps even more so.
Trump has all the subtlety of a professional wrestler. Which means we almost noticed it coming. That’s not to say he can be arrested, but at least there was a chance. But as Trump officials like Stephen Miller have shown, other people who remain silent conscientiously, hoping to go unnoticed as if they paint to succeed in their media, can be far more damaging in the long run.
Pence has many of the same sexist, xenophobic, homophobic and undemocratic impulses as Trump, but he knows he wants to be more careful about how he expresses them.
The Pence-Quayle miniature suggests how far Pence was potentially willing to go to achieve Trump’s voter fraud. I wasn’t going on to tweet about “stop the flight,” but he closed the doors, he was thinking about it.
“You don’t know what position I’m in,” Pence told Quayle, according to Woodward and Costa. But in fact, the entire United States knew exactly what position it was in. That’s not the point.
Sure, Pence puts on a Midwestern-type look with Christian values, yet a guy who has been riding Trump for 4 years serves on the altar of a true god, and that god is power.
Someone willing to undermine a free and fair election in a cowardly (and illegal) attempt to retain force is corrupt and morally bankrupt. And clearly, the concept that Pence acted as a kind of hero of democracy presiding over the certification of the election is a myth. Actually, it turns out he wasn’t a dissatisfied bystander as his boss ran to advance in “The Big Lie. “He was an aspiring co-conspirator. And the House special committee investigating on Jan. 6 is expected to hold a public hearing in which they will hear testimony from Quayle and Pence.
Other Americans have a right to know the full extent of the former vice president’s complicity in this attack on our democratic institutions. Capitol police officers and local law enforcement officers who were invaded by domestic terrorists on Jan. 6 deserve to know if any of the other people they were tasked with protecting were also acting as agents for the Democratic arsonists.
Mike Pence has made silence an art form. He now skillfully uses it for scrutiny and duty in order to rehabilitate and whitewash his tarnished reputation. It’s time to give up the masquerade.
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Kurt Bardella is an adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). He is a former spokesman and senior adviser to Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. You can do it @KurtBardella.
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