Mike Pence Is Showing His Hypocrisy and Moral Bankruptcy

 

It's no secret to regular readers that I despise Mike Pence.  While he is not a toxic malignant narcissist like Der Trumpenfuhrer to whom he has seemingly sworn an oath of loyalty akin to that of Hitler's inner, the reasons to view Pence with utter contempt are numerous. First, there his closeted homosexuality which he seeks to hide by attacking the larger LGBT community and knowingly doing harm to other citizens.  While I was closeted and a GOP activist I never acted to harm others in the LGBT community and when the attacks on gays escalated I resigned and joined the Democrat resistance. Second, there is Pence's sick ambition - he thinks he's destined to be president some day - which causes him to do whatever he thinks further that ambition, to hell with the harm others suffer. Then, of course, there is his insufferable hypocrisy as he feigns being a devout Christian even as he prostitutes himself to and for a man who is the antithesis to true Christian values. Add to this his indifference to the failed Trump/Pence response to the Covid-19 pandemic for which is is nominally responsible.  Finally, there is Pence's silence as Trump seeks to subvert the 2020 presidential election results and more or less mount a coup. In short, Pence lacks a spine and any true moral compass.  He is defined by his fear of Trump and mindless - although I would argue misdirected - ambition. When all is said and done, Pence will find himself forever toxic because of his fealty to Trump and his most likely and only means is to push to use the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Indeed, it might the only way in which history might view him kindly. A column in the Washington Post looks at Pence's many moral failings.  Here are highlights: 

Where is Vice President Pence?  To be more precise, will the vice president — the one administration official who is absolutely safe from being fired by President Trump — ever acknowledge the reality that he and Trump lost?

Does he think it’s appropriate for Trump to summon leaders of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature to the White House in an attempt to subvert the election results?

Does he believe, as Trump attorney Sidney Powell asserted groundlessly Thursday, that “President Trump won by a landslide, we are going to prove it”? Or, as Rudolph W. Giuliani claimed, “This has been a massive attack on the integrity of the voting system in the greatest democracy on earth. The people who did this have committed one of the worst crimes that I’ve ever seen or observed.”

And even if Pence doesn’t manage a baseline nod in the direction of rationality and small-d, democratic values, will the vice president at least make clear that he will play no role in whatever mischief Trump and his cronies are cooking up to try to deny the presidency to Biden?

No one who has watched Pence’s bobble-headed sycophancy over the past four years should expect much in the way of bravery. That is not the Pence way. The closest he comes to distancing himself from Trump’s excesses is silence. That loyalty is understandable — and under ordinary circumstances, perhaps even commendable — from a vice president, particularly one with presidential ambitions of his own to tend.

These are not ordinary circumstances.  For one thing, there is the pandemic, which grows ever more lethal. Pence, who heads the administration’s coronavirus task force, took to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal in June to decry “grim predictions of a second wave,” urging people not to “panic” over “overblown” media scare tactics.

Yet Pence remained typically mute as Trump mocked mask-wearing as politically correct weakness. Now a quarter of a million Americans have died. In the face of pleas from public health experts, the Trump administration has refused to cooperate with the Biden transition team, hobbling efforts to plan for vaccine distribution and assess testing capabilities. This is not just hard-knuckle partisan politics — it is dangerous malfeasance in an area of Pence’s core responsibility.

The vice president’s silence, and his capitulation to Trump’s intransigence, carries deadly consequences. “More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” Biden warned this week. Such deaths are on Pence’s conscience.

Then there is the threat to democracy itself posed by Trump’s increasingly delusional claims that the election was somehow tainted by massive fraud that wrested victory from him. Pence has not echoed these baseless assertions. His comments have been comparatively anodyne and notably sporadic

In the weeks since, Pence has lent his name to the rotating cast of Trumpian characters who besiege supporters with requests for contributions. “No matter what the media says, this Election is not over,” Pence emailed supporters Thursday morning. “More votes are coming in for the President every single day, and with your help, we’ll secure FOUR MORE YEARS for the American People.”

That’s looking increasingly doubtful to anyone who has a grip on reality. To Trump and his coalition of the crazed, it means grasping at ever more extreme measures to cling to power. Having realized that Trump has no hope of reversing Biden’s wins in key states, these operatives are now trying desperately to delay the final vote certification and perhaps create chaos when Congress convenes in a special joint session on Jan. 6 to count the results and declare the winner

Pence being Pence, which is to say both feckless and ambitious, it’s probably naive to expect that he will take any steps to deter Trump’s salt-the-earth strategy. He is, granted, in a difficult spot — petrified, like other Republican elected officials, of doing anything to incite the president and thereby anger his base; wary, like other potential 2024 contenders, of a Trump re-run in four years. But it might not be too much to expect Pence to distance himself from Trump’s “go to the limit” approach, as exemplified by the Trump lawyers’ bonkers statements and the president’s effort to overturn the Michigan result.

Pence heads to Georgia on Friday to campaign for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ahead of the two Senate runoffs early next year. The strongest argument for getting Republicans to the polls on Jan. 5 is that failing to reelect Perdue and Loeffler would result in a 50-50 Senate — with Vice President Kamala D. Harris poised to break a tie. Perhaps it’s an opportune moment for Pence to recognize that reality and, finally, do what’s best for his party instead of what’s best for Trump.

Pence is despicable and hopefully history condemns him.  His silence has made him complicit in all of Trump's crimes and damage to the nation.