Mike Pence Put His Soul on Layaway and the Devil Has Come to Collect

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

06 January 21

At the end of his term as Indiana governor, his career in politics was cooked. Then there was a knock on the door.

But till you make a bargain like that, you've got no idea of how fast four years can run. By the last months of those years, Jabez Stone's known all over the state and there's talk of running him for governor—and it's dust and ashes in his mouth.

—The Devil and Daniel Webster, Stephen Vincent Benet

ooner or later, the bill comes due. The Great Repo Man shows up on your doorstep. Among his other attributes, the devil is a stickler for strict constructionism. The contract is what it says it is. Mike Pence, good Christian man that he is, right now is getting a fine lesson in that eternal truth. From the New York Times:

But despite Mr. Trump’s clear loss to Mr. Biden, the president and a group of loyalist House and Senate Republicans are plotting to upend the process by objecting to the certification of several states. Lacking the votes to prevail, Mr. Trump is now pressuring Mr. Pence to take matters into his own hands to delay the vote tabulation or alter it in Mr. Trump’s favor.

“The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors,” the president tweeted on Tuesday.

In fact, no, he doesn't, no matter what your favorite TV lawyers are telling you.

Back in 2016, Mike Pence's political career was a dead fish. He was coming to the end of a tenure as governor of Indiana that saw him leaving office as intensely unpopular as it is possible for an Indiana Republican to be. In fact, the leaders of the Republican majority in the state legislature said flat out that Job One of a new legislative year was going to have to be fixing everything Pence had screwed up. And then a benefactor showed up at his door, offering Pence a shot at being a heartbeat away from becoming President of the United States. All it would cost him was his soul, and he could put that on layaway. And now El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is coming to collect.

To repeat, there is nothing that Pence can do. In 1856, the Wisconsin electors were a day late in reporting their results to the state capitol in Madison because a blizzard had paralyzed the state. After the first of the year, when Congress met to certify the results of the election, presiding officer Senator James Mason, whose grandfather, George Mason, can credibly be called the Father of the Bill of Rights, unilaterally accepted the Wisconsin electors, touching off a furious outburst on the floor. The Wisconsin electors eventually were validated, but the issue laid there like a constitutional land mine until 1887, when the Electoral Count Act was passed. Frankly, the law was a bit of a mess, but it clearly said that the presiding officer—in this case, Mike Pence—cannot unilaterally decide to accept or not accept electors. Of course, the tangle in 1857 had produced President James Buchanan, in case the precedent wasn't scarifying enough.

I have no sympathy for Mike Pence. He knew the vessel on which he chose to sail. That he can't do what he's being asked to do ought to be relief enough for anyone whose ambition has spoiled his character. He doesn't need my sympathy.