Mike Pence, from submissive vice president to 'traitor' of Donald Trump
After 1,446 days in the shadow of Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence has recently become the main protagonist of the American political scene. Republicans and Democrats have been and will continue to be pending on him for the next few days.
One and the other have demanded important decisions from him in the face of the open crisis.
President Trump desperately approached Pence as a last resort to try to prevent the joint session of the two Houses from officially recognizing Democrat John Biden as the winner of the presidential elections on November 3.
"Vice President Pence, as president of the Senate, has the power to reject fraudulently elected voters," Trump said on his Twitter account.
The role of the president of the Senate was fundamentally formal in that session; as established in the 12th Amendment, where Congress had to certify the final results released on December 14 by the Electoral College by which John Biden was proclaimed president-elect.
Pence's role was limited by law to presiding over the session and opening the envelopes of each state and confirming aloud how many voters had been obtained by each candidate.
However, Trump was pressuring Pence to prevent that, the last, institutional act before Biden's inauguration as president on January 20.
Several Republican congressmen had filed for the same purpose, without success, a lawsuit before a federal court with the intention of modifying the Electoral Recount law so that Pence would have resolution capacity. Many other Republicans had also rejected the results of various states, although they did not have the necessary majorities in the Houses to challenge them.
Trump criticized the lack of courage of his vice president
Trump used the presence of the thousands of followers he had summoned near the Capitol to pressure who he was his faithful and submissive vice president for four years.
Nothing like this has ever happened before.
"I hope Mike does the right thing. I hope so, I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we will win the election," Trump said.
But before the session began, Pence announced on Twitter what his position would be: "It is my thoughtful judgment that my intention to support and defend the Constitution constrains me to claim unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be considered and which ones should not," clarifying that his role in that session was "primarily ceremonial."
Mike Pence, already clothed at that time by more than a few critical Republican congressmen and senators, was leaving Trump's ship after having been a staunch defender of his policies and an accomplice in his arbitrariness and scandals for four years.
Thus was born a new Mike Pence. He took off his radical right-wing jacket to magically become an all-star moderate politician, allowing the last constitutional step before Biden's arrival in the White House.
Trump was quick to disqualify him from his followers. He only needed to call him a traitor. "Mike didn't have the courage to do what he should have done to protect our country and our Constitution," Trump said.
Shortly after, he urged the thousands of his followers to march on the Capitol, which would end with the violent assault on the headquarters of the state institution most representative of the sovereignty of the people.
On Twitter Pence received in a few hours hundreds of messages from angry Republicans insulting him, calling him a traitor and even threatening him with death. The most violent group of those who stormed the Capitol sought him out, they wanted revenge for his betrayal, but the Secret Service had quickly put him to safety and he only reappeared when the session resumed hours later after the assailants were evacuated.
Democrats for their part have also lobbied Mike Pence. Nancy Pelosi, the veteran Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, demanded that he invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump, warning him that if he and the Executive do not do so, he could launch a second impeachment against the president.
The appeal to the 25th Amendment has not only been made by Democrats but even sections of the Republican Party that are rushing to distance themselves from Trump. Both are difficult options to execute just a few days before the end of the presidential term.
Pence, candidate for the presidential elections of 2024?
Until this week it was taken for granted that Donald Trump, while trying to cling to power by all means, already saw himself as a presidential candidate for 2024.
Despite the discomfort that his particular way of governing and winning more and more internal and external enemies caused from the first moment within the Republican Party, the eccentric president benefited big capital with his fiscal policy; he lifted environmental restrictions on the industry; he satisfied the Jewish lobby and the evangelical lobby, and managed to cast a spell on his party for four years.
However, the terrible management of the pandemic by his government, the growing intolerance and authoritarianism that led him to get rid of dozens of his main collaborators, civilian, military, of the Intelligence community, and his delusional refusal to acknowledge his defeat By obstructing the transfer of government and inciting violence to his followers, he ended up cracking the support of the Republican establishment and powerful corporate sponsors.
Mike Pence saw what was coming and in recent months began to be seen more and more at public and internal party events.
Many watched his movements. The Lincoln Project, an influential committee created in 2019 by prominent Republicans and former Republicans highly critical of Trump who in these last elections asked to vote for Biden, a month ago aired a video https://www.youtube.com/watch? v = HxBPqCHFCcc & ab_channel = TheLincolnProject that started like this: "Donald, your end is coming and Mike knows it." And he ended with a phrase that these days will be drilling Trump's head: "On January 6 Mike Pence will put the nail in your political coffin when he presides over the Senate vote and certifies that Jose Biden won. This is over and Mike Pence will. knows".
Mike Pence is as misogynistic, homophobic, anti-abortion, racist and reactionary as Trump and he proved it not only as vice president these last four years, but also during his years as governor of Indiana.
As we recalled on these same pages last June https://vientosur.info/trump-apuesta-por-la-biblia/ Mike Pence has even more support in the evangelical lobby and the Jewish lobby than Trump
Both Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, belong to the Zionist evangelist group CUFI (Christians United for Israel), which defends the idea that the chosen people according to Genesis all the territory between the Euphrates River and the Nile. Therefore, they have always defended the annexation of the Palestinian territories to Israel.
The ideological ties between Pence and Trump are strong and therefore this first major public confrontation between them, if it deepens, could have important political consequences in the future.
Before his Republican critics, Trump responds that it is he who obtained more than 74 million votes, that it is he who has even more millions of followers on Twitter, Facebook and Parler, and that he is the best to win the elections again in 2024 .
And not a few think that if it did not have the support of the Republican apparatus, it would try to make Trumpism end up forming its own party, which would be a true earthquake in political life, a party to the right of the Republican Party, a historic event.
The debate is on the table and surely from now on it will be fueled much more.
It would be paradoxical if what the progressive forces on the left of the stagnant Democratic Party had always dreamed of and until now failed to develop, the formation of a new party, extremely complicated given the electoral system, was achieved by the right, creating a sort of American Vox.
