I no longer understand Mike Pence

 Mike Pence.  A riddle wrapped in a slice of Wonder Bread, wrapped in the pages of Leviticus.  In 2016, before Donald Trump consolidated the Republican nomination, I made a prediction on my now-defunct Unmutual Political Blog that whoever got the nomination, that person would select Pence as a running mate.  Trump, most prominently, would need someone who both reassured cultural conservatives (given his, shall we say, questionable personal life and ideological history) while reassuring the party establishment that there would be someone non-crazy to ensure that the idiot game show host wouldn't blow up the world on a lark.  As a hardline social conservative, former House member and governor, Pence was the guy who checked every box.  The question for Pence was, why hitch his wagon to Trump?  At the time, it looked like Trump was going to lose.  The political science forecasting models said that the times favored a generic Republican, but a) nobody was paying attention to those models, and b) even those of us "in the industry" responded by saying that Trump was the exact opposite of "generic."  Trump was and is a lunatic, every week he said or did something that should immolate any candidate at any level, and the polls showed Clinton cruising to victory.  (Until Comey intervened at the last minute, at which point we had almost no polling...).  As it turned out, democracy kind of sucks, and people either cannot tell that Donald Trump is the worst human being in the history of the species, or in some cases, actively liked that about him, but from Pence's perspective, it was a gamble, because being VP, or even just a running mate, might make you nothing more than a national joke (see: Quayle, Dan, about whom you get a different perspective from Fenno's book), but it does increase the probability of becoming P.  Trump pacified those in the party who weren't yet cultists, and Pence rolled the dice on a chance at the Oval Office.

That made sense.

Then, January 6 happened.

What happened to the Republican Party?

Throughout Trump's first term (note my phrasing), one of the refrains was, "surely this will be the thing that turns the party against him.  Surely this is a line that even he cannot cross!"  And the party never turned on him.  And stop calling me Shirley.  And stop making me reference that movie, it sucked.

At every turn, my response was, no, they will never turn on him.  And even after January 6, despite a few moments' hesitation, and a few cautious criticisms, damn-near all of them went running back, falling to their knees before the lord their god.

There is Liz Cheney.  There is Adam Kinzinger.  They are fighting the good fight.  They will lose, but they are fighting the good fight, and they will go down for their principles, the reward being profiles in courage and the ability to live with themselves knowing that they did right.  By many assessments, there is something noble about fighting the losing fight, the inevitable loss staring them in the face, just because they cannot do otherwise.  But it is basically Liz, Adam and just a couple of others scattered around the country.

And then there's Pence.

What the absolute fuck is he doing?  I do not get it.

Pence said no to Trump.  He dithered and wavered and seriously contemplated the overthrow of democracy, but ironically, it was Dan Quayle who told him to do the right thing, and Pence did.  He said no.  Once you do that, there's no going back, ever.  That lynch mob was calling for Pence's death, and Trump was on their side.

There are two paths.  There's the Trump cult, and there's going full Liz.  Pence doesn't have the courage to go full Liz, and it's too late to go back to the Trump cult.  That means his political career is over, but he seems to think there is a middle path in the Republican Party.  There isn't.  Technically, there isn't a Cheney path in the Republican Party either, but that's a noble, losing fight for principle.  But I don't get it.

Pence has decided to poke his head back up, try to play the endorsement game, give speeches, and he is making moves as though he wants to... run for office (?).

I don't get it.

As we watch the January 6 hearings play out, we have a narrative being constructed about "Team Normal" and "Team Crazy," using the terminology of Bill Stepien.  The former was ostensibly the crowd around Trump telling him that his conspiracy theories were bullshit, and the latter was the Giuliani/Powell/Flynn/Eastman wack-job brigade.  "Team Normal" was bullshit.  They never went public.  They never had the courage.  Yeah, Cipollone and the rest told Trump behind closed doors that he was off the rails, but if they had gone public, maybe real damage could have been averted, and you don't get to call yourself "Team Normal" when you have spent years working for Donald Fucking Trump.  And if you tell yourself that someone needed to keep things on the rails, that was the time.  That was your fucking bat-signal, motherfucker!  It required going public.  If you didn't, that negates any justification you told yourself for working for President Pussygrabber, and the result was January 6.

But at least Cipollone, Stepien and the rest of "Team Normal" are now talking to the committee and pretending like they were the voices of reason.  They are pretending like they are the side of light.

Pence?  I truly do not get what he is doing.  He is trying to play endorsement games and making pre-candidacy moves, as though there is a lane in the GOP for someone who has turned on Trump and doesn't go crawling back.  Lindsey Graham and the rest went crawling back, and true, no amount of groveling would ever work for Pence anymore, but that pretty much means that Pence has one path.

The path of Cheney and Kinzinger.

Pence retains some delusion that he still has a place in the GOP.  I have no idea how he maintains such delusions, but there it is.  And if we're honest, top dog among the anti-Trump conservatives is and forever shall be Liz Cheney.  Why Liz and not Adam Kinzinger?  She had a leadership position in the GOP, and she is legacy, so it meant more.  She is also fucking brutal.  But what if Pence had come out immediately and said no, I'm putting a stop to this?  And held do it?

He would have been the hero of democracy and the anti-Trump conservatives.  The real profile in courage.

But that path closed to him.  He told Trump no, and then put his head down, shut up, and tried to make nice because he didn't want to pay the cost.

It doesn't work that way.

Liz Cheney is going to lose.  She knows it.  We all know it.  She isn't going to whine about it or back down one iota on even one, single point because if you actually are fighting the good fight on a point of conscience, you fight the good fight.  Either you pay the cost, or you don't.  Nearly every worthless, spineless, unprincipled little shit in the GOP has groveled and slavered and slobbered all over their living god, Donald Trump because they have nothing even vaguely resembling a principle.

But if you are going to stand up to Trump, you fucking stand up to him.  And accept the consequences.

Pence is trying to have it both ways.  He committed the ultimate sin for a Republican-- really, the only sin for a Republican in the Trump era-- and he is trying to pretend it didn't happen, to get out of paying the cost.

Does he actually think he has a future in the GOP?  He doesn't.  And without going full Liz, he can't even count himself among the defenders of democracy.  Hence, Democrats and anyone else committed to the principles of democracy cannot simply say, you know, I may have disagreements with you on policy, but at least you're fighting the good fight against autocracy.

He parried an important strike, but then stepped aside and tried to whistle himself into the background.

So how deluded is Mike Pence?

It has been too long since I have posted the Drive-By Truckers.  Here's their performance of "The Righteous Path," from Austin City Limits.  The studio recording is on Brighter Than Creation's Dark.