Michael Pence:"It’s become clear to me: This is not my time.”
He can cry if he wants to. But it isn't his party anymore.
Three weeks ago, at the New Hampshire Republican showcase of candidates event, the applause for Michael Pence was so tepid I felt sorry for him.
I had a familiar feeling, the one I get in hospice situations when I visit a patient to say a greeting and word of appreciation. I would be saying a "goodbye." It would be unspoken, but the patient was dying and we both knew it.
By dumb luck I got to say "goodbye" to Mike Pence. I was at my table at the rear of the "Leadership Summit" meeting room three weeks ago, engaged in conversation with a GOP activist. He noticed something behind me. I turned. There was Mike Pence, three feet from me, exchanging pleasantries with a well-wisher. I put on a warm, unthreatening smile as I waited for a break in the conversation. Pence noticed my outstretched hand and shook it. I looked him square in the face. I said, "Thank you for what you did on January 6. It was the right thing to do."
He smiled warmly, looked me square in the face and said, "God be with you." He positioned himself for this selfie.
Pence understands why he did not have political traction. Pundits who say that Pence had no "lane," miss the point. They say Pence was squeezed between the Trump loyalists, who will never forgive him, and the anti-Trump Republicans who don't trust him because he spent years giving political cover to a dangerous president. Pence understands his party has changed. There was no "Trump-Pence" administration. It was all Trump after those first few months in 2016 when Pence gave permission to Evangelicals to support a flagrant, unrepentant sinner. After some time meeting voters Pence saw his party no longer wants Christian conservatism. It wants populism and nationalism. Its members are part of a tribe and they want an angry rule-breaker who will help it win against the enemies besetting it from all sides. Party members are impatient with regulations, constraints, diplomatic protocol, and tender hurt feelings of liberal snowflakes with chips on their shoulders. It wants results. Liberal tears are a bonus.
"Larry the cable guy" understands the mood. Get stuff done. Break eggs.
Pence got left behind. His resume looks right on paper: U.S. Representative, governor of a Midwest state, and Vice President. His positions are perfectly normal: Opposing "Biden weakness," inflation, high gasoline prices, fentanyl, unregulated immigration at our southern border, crime, "out of control spending," and abortion. But he gets wrong the most important thing, the new mood and style of the GOP. In speeches Pence says, "I'm a conservative, but I am not angry about it." It draws a chuckle. He also says he is Rush Limbaugh, but on de-caf. The first statement is true. The second one is not. Limbaugh was joyfully irreverent, ironic, naughty. He loved being offensive. Pence is a choir boy, eager to do the right, very conservative, very earnest thing. That party no longer respects or wants that. It is a kick-ass and take names party now.
Republican voters who retain affection for the grand old party of propriety and civic virtue can put away that sentimental memory and the inertia that keeps them voting Republican. The old-style Republicans that got votes a decade ago are gone. Marjorie Taylor Green calls McCain a "traitor." Trump calls the Bush presidents, Mitt Romney, and Mitch McConnell cowardly RINOs and enemies of the people. An old-style red-team player like Pence gets 2% in the polls and cannot raise money.
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11 comments:
... who Trump wants to endorse him.
Whatever one thinks, we all should be grateful it was Pence, and not any of many other possibilities, who stood as Vice President on January 6. Many are weak; he was not. Perhaps his wife, with him that day, helped to steel his spine.
Adolf Hitler did not live forever and neither will the Orange Fraudster. It was complicated and it took a while, but Germany recovered. There is still hope that that party can fix itself. There still are some normal Republicans among us. They are endangered but not extinct.
Like any good, God-fearing, evangelical Christian, Mike Pence probably thought that he would be a positive influence on the crook, traitor and sexual predator. Pence probably thought that his boss would "change his heart" and come to Jesus. But that didn't happen, no surprise there.
If the Orange Fraudster gets locked up or put on house arrest, maybe Pence can write to or visit him. Sometimes even the most evil and notorious criminals "get saved" behind bars.
I am more and more convinced that we are living in a time when the two party system dissolves and reconfigures itself.
There is going to be a populist party. It remains to be seen what the other party will turn out to be. It may be that neither of the two legacy parties will survive in its current form. Both the Republican and Democratic parties may be about to join the Whigs in the history books.
To state the obvious: There’s no place in today’s Republican Party for anyone who admits the fact that Biden won a free and fair election and that trying to overturn it was wrong. Pence has all the appeal of a department store mannequin. Other than that, I’m sure he’ll go far.
Very true. He did the right thing and almost was lynched by people in his own party. Mike Pence was a hero on that day. He stood up to the GQP. MAGA mob.
Off topic: On a more light-hearted note, new House Speaker Mike Johnson looks like the elf on a shelf. I wonder if he will last until Christmas?
Pence and the evangelicals put abortion above all, and lionized, tolerated, then excused Trump accordingly. Pence to his credit found other limits. From the Christian fundie perspective, I suppose they still consider Trump to have been--to be--worth it. They are desperately mistaken in my view.
I read that Pence called Dan Quail to ask his opinion on what he should do. Quail told him he had to just count the results and, by the Constitution, couldn’t alter them. That confirmed his thinking.
Trump only likes the Constitution when it’s convenient.
Pence is considered some kind of hero for keeping his oath of office and honoring the Constitution. Once that was the least we expected of our politicians, but now it makes them the target of death threats from Trump’s chumps. What a commentary on our times and the state of today’s GOP!
You're not a hero for simply doing your job.
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