Ticker Views
Pence Vs Trump: the gloves are off
Last Friday was the day the gloves came off the hands of the former vice president, the former president and the party he so dominates.
“A week is a lifetime in politics,” the old saying goes. Mike Pence’s future lifetime in politics just got crunched into 12 hours.
Earlier Friday, in Utah, the leadership of the Republican Party, acting under orders from the 45th president, passed a resolution condemning two of their own, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, for serving on the special House committee examining the insurrection against the Capitol and the attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden on January 6 last year.
It was not enough for the party leaders to say that the investigation was going too far, that it was too partisan, and that it had no redeeming political purpose.
No, they had to do an Orwellian pivot, and whitewash the violence that unfolded for all the world to see.
The Republican National Committee resolution reads, “The Conference must not be sabotaged by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who have demonstrated, with actions and words, that they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022 …
“Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
“Legitimate political discourse.” Let’s parse that for a moment: It is OK to break into the Capitol, to take physical control of the chambers of the House and Senate, to stop the members of Congress from exercising their constitutional responsibilities after the election that Donald Trump lost, and try to hunt down Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and Vice President Mike Pence, with cries of “Hang Mike Pence” in the air.
Legitimate political discourse.
Earlier in the week, at a rally in Texas, the former president said he would want to pardon all those involved in the attacks. And in a statement a few days later, Trump finally and formally confirmed what he wanted all along.
The vice president, he said, “could have overturned the election.” The vice president could have – should have – reversed the judgment of the American people.
After a year of an awkward soft shoe with Trump (“As I said that day, Jan 6 was a dark day in history of the United States Capitol. You know, President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office. And I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye to eye on that day.”), at a conference in Florida, not far from where Trump is ensconced at Mar-a-Lago for the winter (there are reports he assumed the role of DJ in the fabled ballroom for the Saturday night party crowd at the resort), Pence said:
“President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president… The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes.
“If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections — we’ll lose our country. Whatever the future holds, I know we did our duty that day. I believe the time has come to focus on the future.”
If anyone doubts that the leadership of the Republican Party is not behind Trump, they need to think again.
As one of the leading constitutional scholars in the House, Democrat Jamie Raskin said, “The Republican Party is so off the deep end now that they are describing an attempted coup and a deadly insurrection as political expression.”
There is no doubt that Mike Pence wants to become president. Many were asking: does Pence have the backbone to stand up to Trump in the Republican primaries in 2024 and take him on frontally on the issue of existential importance to Trump – his Big Lie about the 2020 election?
Pence has the right stuff. The answer is yes.
And the same question will be asked of every other Republican candidate for president.