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The Plausible Positions of Mike Pence and Donald Trump
Progressives and the GOPe are enjoying the “dispute” between former President Trump and his former Vice President (and probable presidential candidate) Pence. Trump has recently made the entirely reasonable point that the effort by Democrats to amend the 1876 Electoral Count Act suggests that Pence had the power to do what he declined to do during the electoral vote counting proceedings. Pence responded by stating that Trump was wrong and reiterating his position set forth in his “Dear Colleague” letter of January 6, 2021.
So, who is right and who is wrong?
Both of them. At least pending future events.
Pence has the more elegantly stated argument. His letter set out language from a justice of the Supreme Court and former judge from a circuit court of appeal that guided his actions. If you have not read the letter I suggest you do so. Pence makes a plausible, but not definitive, case for his actions. He put out a road map for challenge that the GOPe in the Senate did not act upon when it had the majority but restricted his role to counting the votes as certified by the states.
Trump, in contrast, never states his arguments “elegantly”. His is a more vernacular approach. He highlights his suspicions and makes emotional statements that resonate with a lot of people. He asks, quite reasonably, if Pence’s reading of the law was correct, why are Democrats now trying to change it? The Democrats have characterized what Trump was asking of Pence was to overturn an election. Pence himself does not directly say that but simply states that Trump wanting him to take any action to delay or give states additional time to re-examine their own electoral process would have been vesting power in the Vice President that he did not have.
Examining these two alternative views on January 6, 2021, one clearly sees the plausibility of Vice President Pence’s view. Examining these two alternative views a bit more than a year later, one has a lot more sympathy for President Trump’s view given the disasters that have befallen the nation under President Biden and that are likely to get worse before they get better, if ever.
Vice President Pence is running for president in 2024. Not officially announced, of course, but doing the things that candidates do to position themselves for a candidacy. And in so many ways Pence is an ideal candidate with a strong resume. But how do you run against the disaster of the Biden Administration when you are up against a President Trump (or even a Governor DeSantis) who will simply point out that when you had the chance to save the nation (as you now propose to do) you did nothing? This is why Mike Pence cannot win the Republican nomination.
Mike Pence makes a plausible argument for his inaction. And if you are the Democrats and you don’t want to face Mike Pence in the General Election of 2024 all you need to do is keep on trying to amend the 1876 Electoral Count Act, rendering Pence’s argument merely “plausible” and never “definitive”.
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And a judge that hears a case and makes a decision, is also acting “unilaterally.” So what?
Whom did those two ditsy lawyers work for? And why didn’t the boss do something about it immediately? If you hire those kind of election lawyers, you don’t deserve to be elected again.
I thought he meant “solve the Presidential election fraud of 2020” was the single most important thing to do. The point being that voters have no reason to go to the polls otherwise.
“Solve the … fraud” is a fuzzy statement at best, but I think that he meant institute safeguards to make sure it doesn’t happen in 2022 and 2024. If he didn’t mean that, I’d be disappointed.
Wasn’t he saying that insuring election integrity was the most important thing for Republicans to do?
I dunno anymore.
That’s how I took it too.
There was a sketchy role that Sidney Powell played with the Trump legal team after the election. She was at one point an acknowledged member of the team, but when she started making flaky claims, the Trump team made a public statement to the effect that she is not being paid or something like that. She was one of the people sued by the Dominion Voting Machine company and she was the knucklehead who made the public statement that her outrageous claims about the voting machines were never meant to be taken seriously or believed by the public, or something like that. I’m not aware that Trump ever denounced her or said much of anything about her.
No, it was to ensure election integrity.
For all the people that are thinking Trump was not urging voters to stay home, when did he ever urge voters to go to the polls? If he was seriously worried that Republicans would sit out 2022 and 2024, wouldn’t he have been raising alarm bells? Republicans sitting out the next two elections is a four-alarm fire. It’s Armageddon. Is anybody aware of any other time where trump has addressed this catastrophe in the making? I’m going to do some searching…….
The only thing I could find so far is Trump urging people to go to the polls to vote for Glenn Youngkin for Virginia Gov’nor.
I agree with all of this. This was an explicit example of state Republican representatives allowing crimes to happen and sitting on their hands while the uneducated public asked for a solution from D.C. (or Texas).
In fact, a lot of this relates to indictment #6 against King George III under our Declaration of Independence (which I wrote about at SalernoSchools.com).
so why didn’t the RNC and or Trump / DOJ sue them when the were changed?
2020 was the ultimate legal “catch-22”: courts ruled suits before the election were premature as no justiciable harm had yet occurred; courts ruled after the election variously that claimants didn’t have standing to sue or there was insufficient time to complete the process per the 1876 Electoral Count Act.
I think the Vice President has some power in the situation. Is the Vice President supposed to declare a winner that he knows is false?
The thing is that Trump needed to flip 3 states. The chance that 3 flipped coins will land on heads is 12.5%. Yes, that sort of thing does happen. I remember in the reapportionment for congressional seats that three Democrat states such as Rhode Island and perhaps New York and some other state were supposed to lose representation to Arizona (newly-formed swing state) along with Texas and Florida. For some strange reason that did not happen. Getting three states to flip? That might be more like trying to roll three 6s on three six-sided dice. What are the chances that that would happen? About 0.46%? Maybe if you could flip one state, you could more easily flip the others, but it would still be tough.
If you flip Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, the electoral college is tied 269 to 269. Flipping three states AND then sending everything in the House of Representatives, that could be nightmare. If there was some clear evidence that even some independents and a few Democrats could see, flipping three states might be possible. However, how do you sort out the illegally-cast votes? Heck, you could do all work, flip zero states, and look even more ridiculous.
Gore declared Bush the winner after he won the 2000 election by 537 Florida votes.
On February 13, 1861, Vice President Breckenridge declared his 1860 opponent and the husband of his cousin Mary Todd Lincoln the winner.
(more on Vice President Breckenridge, just for the heck of it)
On February 24 1861, Breckenridge visited Lincoln at Willard’s Hotel. He endorsed Crittenden’s proposed compromise, a collection of constitutional amendments designed to avert secession and appease the South. On March 4, 1861, the last day of the session, Breckinridge swore in Hannibal Hamlin as his successor as vice president. Hamlin, in turn, swore in the newly elected senators, including Breckinridge. He urged Lincoln to withdraw federal forces from the Confederate states in order to avert war. The congressional session ended on March 28, and in an April 2 address to the Kentucky General Assembly, he continued to advocate peaceful reconciliation of the states and proposed a conference of border states to seek a solution. On April 12, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter. On May 10, he was chosen by the legislature as one of six delegates to a conference to decide Kentucky’s next action. Breckinridge was one of the three states’ rights delegates. Kentucky adopt a neutral stance in the Civil War and started to arm itself to prevent invasion by either side. Breckinridge did not support this recommendation, but he agreed to abide by it once it was approved by the legislature. In special elections in June, pro-Union candidates captured 9 of 10 seats in Kentucky’s House delegation. Both sides sent troops into Kentucky in early September. Word reached Breckinridge that Union General Thomas E. Bramlette intended to arrest him. In an open letter to his constituents dated October 8, 1861, Breckinridge maintained that the Union no longer existed and that Kentucky should be free to choose her own course. He was indicted for treason in U.S. federal district court in Frankfort on November 6, 1861, having officially enlisted in the Confederate army days earlier. On December 2, 1861, he was declared a traitor by the United States Senate. Breckinridge was made a major general and Confederate States Secretary of War at the very end of the war. He and his family fled to Florida, Cuba, Britain, Toronto, Paris, Versailles, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Syria, Egypt, the Holy Land, Naples, and Rome met where he met with Pope Pius IX. President Andrew Johnson proclaimed amnesty for all former Confederates on December 25, 1868. Elected vice president at age 35, he died at age 54.
I’ve only made it as far as @vinceguerra‘s excellent comment #11 so far. Great post, great discussion.
When this discussion is had elsewhere, it’s predicated upon the power of somebody like Darth Cheney to unilaterally “overturn” the election and so forth, which is a straw man. This is about the right and proper duty and obligation of various incumbents to *challenge* things that seem fishy. A challenge is not a foregone conclusion — it is an objection to a process that is not complete, and a challenge need not be definitive in order to be a Very Good Idea.
Nobody wants to drown in frivolous or mechanized challenges. Also, nobody wants to live in a corrupt machine-politics single-party vote-stealing gangster’s paradise.
Because Pence and Paul had power to challenge, they had a duty to do so. Powers are attached to offices as duties, not as personal perks of office-holders. Rand Paul was particularly disappointing in arguing that he felt that he had no role to play — the same position would remove the Senate from a serous role in confirming Justices and the like.
Our system relies upon each branch, each body, each incumbent zealously defending their own prerogatives and advancing their positions. The founders knew that people in organizations attempt to prey upon the powers of their neighbors, and in their wisdom, incorporated this eternal fact into the system as a feature, not a bug.
Some of us found Trump’s position correct and Pence’s and Paul’s incorrect in real time. Still do. Neither Pence nor Paul correctly (I say) applied the logic of positional power, Constitution and law, and the clearly hazardous, remarkable situation. They failed and it has cost us greatly.
There is an argument that had they acted and the results been sent back, there would have been a terrible wave of mob violence. Well, of course there would be. That’s what happens every time our domestic terrorist Marxist democrats don’t get their way. That’s no basis for interpreting law. That’s tyranny, and that’s where we are.
And there it is, “overturn”. Straw man.
I’m not tracking. And Biden held no office in 2017.
I was read up on this at the time — now I just retain my conclusions. I actually agree with a firm interpretation of the word “Shall.” However, Scalia and Garner’s Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts points out an utter soup of interpretation and construction. As “shall” is perfectly clear to me, I would say that this is mostly misinterpretaton and poor construction – -laws abusing the term should have been sent back for re-work, not interpreted under a chosen carpet.
Four pages are dedicated to showing how “shall” ain’t always mandatory, which I find on its face silly but for the point that “shall” is future tense, and I support the idea that instead of merely mentally replacing with “is required to” (or will be, hence the difficulty), strike each “shall” and replace with either “must”, “is”, or “may”, as appropriate. There’s still a bit of chicken-end-egg here, and a healthy dose of bell-the-cat to boot. In a world so perfect as that in which these remedies are credible, we would simply have used “shall” correctly in the first place.
Pence’s position is more credible than Paul’s. Pence’s is an argument — Paul’s was a cop-out.
You elucidated the true issues, separated them from the straw man arguments, and articulated a rational and (I think) correct view of the controversy. Nice job.
Disagree…
… but agree with much of this part.
Bit of a non sequitur there — the Democrats will do as they please regardless of (and typically shortly after) Republicans not doing a thing based on that very fear.
Also, the power either is there or it isn’t. No power is being created, although I take your point (I assume) about political will and Overton etc.
I want to express that exact idea when engaging on a controversy, oh, about 9.5 times a week. But I have never discovered that sentence.
So I either
In the latter case, I am sometimes giving a conclusion that I would no longer reach at present, if I considered new data–especially if I took into account the current convincing arguments being presented.
I will have forgotten this sentence by the time I next need it, probably this afternoon.
Do you suppose that Max could put a button on the Make a Comment screen that automatically inserts your magical formula?
I do realize the goal posts have shifted since my last comment but, for the record anyway, let’s check out the transcript as “Donald Trump visited Dalton, Georgia on January 4 to hold a rally in support of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue for the Senate runoff election“:
That is from a quick scan of the first six minutes of the transcript. (I didn’t read the entire thing, I think his message to “his team” was clear. But, rest assured, this same claim will be repeated by these jokers ’till the end of time.) He ends with:
And notice, the other part of my question goes unaddressed yet again.
I agree. Well done.
Thank you for bringing the receipts, @stevenseward. If this is the best evidence that ‘Trump” said don’t vote in Georgia in 2020, there’s nothing there.
I can’t prove that the reference is to the predicate, but Occam’s razor will get us there twice, and maybe three times.
I’m not going to NRO. If this is really the meat of the thing, I could (most charitably) chalk it up to them being so utterly out of touch that they never heard a whisper of the black-pilled throngs saying “we won’t vote our way out of this”, “elections are meaningless”, “votes are futile”, “they’ll just steal what they don’t win” and so forth.
But you know who did hear us? Our President. That’s *why* he’s our President (albeit, temporarily inconvenienced in the de Tocquevillian sense).
He is defending the Republican Party’s control of the federal government.
When we elect a president, (a) we’re electing the police officers who can come knock on our door in the middle of the night and take us away. Which party is in that office has ramifications for every single American. And (b) it’s the cabinet that controls an enormous amount of money and resources and lives.
Anyone who sees this or hears Trump as a whining little kid really doesn’t grasp the size of our federal government.
Frankly, I think Trump gets it and most people don’t.
The other thing Trump knows well from his years in television is what gets people’s attention and what doesn’t. Conflict is watched; academic discussions are not.
If these election irregularities do not stay front and center in the American mind, we’re sunk forever. Trump is making this into a personal story because that’s how people think and that’s what motivates people to act: individuals, not groups.
Not a day goes by that I am not grateful to him for keeping this issue alive. All by himself.
Even if the only publicity he gets is because the press is using it to insult him and play into the “Trump is a child” story line. That’s when sacrifice really matters, when people actually lose something, which he is, clearly.
I wouldn’t be able to do what he is doing. There are only so many tomatoes I can take being thrown at me. He is a unique person that we were lucky to have as president. I wish he were still in office.
That WAS him ringing the alarm bells. And the NT NRO shills spun it for nice people like you. You’ve been cajoled right past the PLAIN meaning.
For which trouble the NT fainting brigade castigated him. Orange Man Bad for Youngkin is “bad for Youngkin” seemed to be their take.
Biden was still Vice President on January 6th, 2017 when he presided over the Electoral college vote that installed Trump as President. Biden remained Vice President until January 20th, 2017.