For more thana year, I have been pumping the breaks on the MikePence hero worship, along with better minds than me. Yesterday,the collective media finally jammed the brake pedal to the floorboards. Resisting every urge—to say I told you so, ABCNews revealed that the former Vice President had planned to be a no-show on January 6, shirking his Constitutional responsibility to tally and confirm the electoral count and declare Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the duly elected President and Vice President of the United States. His son reportedly advised Mr. Pence to be what he has repeatedly claimed in his failed campaign for the Republican nomination for president: a patriot,“You took the same oath I took,” Lt. Michael J. Pence told his father.
I must credit Republicans who never accepted Pence’s faux bravery in the face of a challenge to democracy and rejected him out of hand. In the same vein, I was dismayed by my fellow Democrats who set aside his starry-eyed loving gaze at Donald Trump, his blind devotion to the derisive attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci, his collaboration in the deaths of thousands of Americans during the pandemic, and quietly tagging along with his boss’s praise of dictators, murderers, and autocrats, then labeling him as brave for following the law. Mr. Pence has tried to excuse his behavior, saying the VP’s job is to back the chief executive. Maybe Mr. Pence should have taken more advice from his son, who would have also told him the duty to abort an illegal or immoral order is also a part of the job.
Mr. Pence’s hypocrisy has been breathtaking. An illustration of that could not have been more evident than at his first campaign event in June. The media feted Pence for what they described as a blistering attack on Mr. Trump,where he said, [Trump] “demanded I choose between him and our Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice.” Later in that same address, he stated, “I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,”the former vice president said.
That bit of truth-telling by Mr. Pence was overshadowed by cowardly Mike,who realized he needed to appease the people who wanted to hang him on January 6 and told Fox News he would“absolutely support the Republican nominee,” even if it’s Trump. And during a CNN town hall, Pence said he does not believe Trump should be indicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case — even if federal prosecutors have evidencehe committed a crime. Mr. Pence did learn something from Mr. Trump: that delusion is comfortable—all the things Mr. Pence’s devotion to God tells him can be abandoned. Unlike asking for forgiveness, you can lie to yourself and others and be your own deity. Mr. Trump was once asked if he had anything to ask for forgiveness, and he answered, “...I don’t think so.”He said later in the same interview, “When I drink my little wine – which is about the only wine I drink – and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed,” he said. “I think in terms of ‘let’s go on and let’s make it right.’” That statement should have been what tore the shroud for Mr. Pence, but he abandoned not only the Constitution but his God for the GOP’s “Orange Jesus.”
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