Mike Pence seems to seek redemption. He owes us more. Start by saying Trump's name. He's not Voldermort. By Hal M. Brown -- NJ Today said Mike Pence eloquently carved up Trump and MAGA with the precision of a surgeon.

 

Read how New Jersey Today characterized Mike Pence’s speech at the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award ceremony last night here.

Here’s an excerpt:

In those comments alone, Pence reiterated that Trump lost the election, that election deniers (like the current vice president) are liars, and that Republicans who have kissed the ring must be replaced in order to “find our way forward as one nation.”

And then Pence — who sacrificed his political career by resisting Trump — stuck the knife even deeper into his former boss.

“When I think of that fateful day four years ago, the only heroes I saw were wearing uniforms,” Pence said.

Pence, in singling out the heroism of the Capitol police, refuted Trump’s insistence that the rioters and insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the election on his behalf were patriots who deserved pardons.

The Daily Beast’s take on this was not kind.

Their article (here) begins:

Former Vice President Mike Pence decided not to mention his old boss when he went to pick up a ‘courage’ award for defying him.

Pence received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award at the JFK Library in Boston Sunday for his refusal to endorse false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump—which made him the No. 1 target for Trump’s supporters during the Jan. 6 riots.

The JFK Library Foundation lauded Pence for “putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.” Despite this, Pence failed to mention Trump in his 10-minute acceptance speech.

Yesterday I wrote about how this might troll Trump into a late night rage attack against Pence and the Kennedy Library (here). You can watch the entire 50 minute ceremony here or just fast forward to Pence’s speech.

As far as I can tell Trump had no reaction to this and my hunch is that he didn’t watch it. For one thing, it wasn’t on regular TV and could only be viewed on streaming video. It’s possible segments of it will be aired on TV today.

We may never know what Pence was feeling when the following photos were taken:

Pence seemed to worship Trump like he was a deity, if not the Second Coming. 

I think he should look at his receiving this award as the beginning of his redemption, but see this only as just the first step. He’s made it clear how he feels about Trump now. Treating him as a character in the Harry Potter books who don’t dare utter the name Voldemort he should emulate Harry, Ron, and Hermoine who called him by name.

This is from an article in Screen Rant:

In the books, Deathly Hallows introduced that a Taboo curse was placed on Voldemort's name. The curse made it possible for anyone who said his name to instantly be located by the Death Eaters, giving them the ability to find whoever said it.

For full redemption Pence has to explain why he was taken in by Trump, reveal how he felt and thought about Trump and what he was doing at the time, and explain how he feels about it at present. He must offer a full throated apology and not be content to bask in the afterglow of what he did on January 6th..

Addendum: 

Steve Schmidt wrote this before the awards ceremony. He was harder on Pence than I was. Read Mike Pence is not a 'Profile in Courage' here. He begins as follows:

“Tonight, Mike Pence will receive a ‘Profile in Courage’ award from the JFK Presidential Library. Mike Pence is many things, but a ‘profile in courage’ is not one of them.

Mike Pence is an arsonist.”

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My advice to Pence is to break out his biker self. He should grow a spine and show it

By Hal Brown

 The DonkeyHotey caracatures above represent four stages of Pence. 1) The fawning Trump sidekick angel during his presidency, 2) post election restraining his anger when Trump bgean the Big Lie, 3) after Jan. 6th when he was dealing with the painful realization that Trump had thrown him under the bus, and 4) the past week when he finally seemed to grow a spine and express his at least some of his anger at Trump. Pence needs to refurbish his image. He needs to replace the mental picture people have of him looking like this:

with ones looking like this:

Seee more about Harley biker Pence at the end of my blog.

Above the picture of Pence, on his Harley, the sentence, this would make sense, you misspelled sense. You must’ve been getting very tired near the end.

Modern medicine hasn't figured out how to make someone grow a spine, but Pence may see that his hopes for the presidency at least requires pretending he now has one.

Pence is turning into an interesting story. His recent words about Trump suggests that he knows that the only chance he has to win the nomination is to come out as a milder anti-Trump version of Chris Christie and hope that for whatever reason Trump crashes and burns. He knows there is no way Trump will select him to run as vice presdient again.

This is from ABC News and show the unleashed Pence:

Pence, speaking at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis, stressed that he "had hoped that this issue and the judgment of the president's actions that day would be left to the American people" rather than the legal system -- but he also offered some of his strongest condemnations yet of Trump's decisions around Jan. 6.

"Sadly, the president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear," Pence said. "And while I made my case to him, with what I understood my oath of the Constitution to require, the president ultimately continued to demand that I choose him over the Constitution."

That Pence would not do, he said.

"I really do believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States," he said. "And anyone who asks someone else to put themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States again." 

Does Pence have a chance at being the GOP nominee?

It could turn out that a significant number of Republicans not only sour on supporting Trump but also find the unlikable uncharismatic DeSantis has a case of culture war screaming meemies that makes their skin crawl. 

Of course, those who blame Pence for not overturning the election and who would have been clamoring for him to be hung if they were at the Capitol on Jan. 6th would never support him. 

I assume Pence not only knows how to read but probably reads articles like this from the June 16, 2023 NY Times or other similar articles with photos of the gallows which may stoke the Jan 6 embers in his belly to the burning point. 

Excerpt:

Hours after President Donald J. Trump announced a “wild” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, his supporters began discussing building a gallows in front of the Capitol.

“Could be built very quickly with the right plan and the right people bringing pre-cut materials to the site!” a user wrote on a pro-Trump online forum. “Anybody got a blueprint for a standing gallows like that? Who’s with me?!”

Days later, a second user posted a diagram describing the cuts of lumber and rope that would be needed to erect a gallows and fashion a noose. A lengthy planning discussion ensued. A third posted a manual on how to tie a hangman’s knot.

“We will be building a gallows right in front of the Capitol, so the traitors know the stakes,” another user wrote.

He knows that Trump defended the rioters chant of "hang Mike Pence" (see article). He might even know that there are songs like this about hanging him which is a parody considering it was sung at a Unitarian Church. 

Not content to just praise the J6 rioters Trump collaborated with the J6 Prison Choir on "Justice of All" a real song that  (read article) which became the number one dowloaded song on several service for a period of time.

Below: Play the song.... 

If you were a masochist and endured this poor excuse for a song here's a treat. Yesterday in my blog about Trump meeting his ultimate fate imprisioned in Georgia I put the You Tube of Ray Charles signng "Georgia on my Mind".

Here's Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful" a song which Predient Obama called the most patriotic piece of music ever performed (reference).

In her Sun. Aug. 3 column in The New York Times "Mike Pence Spoke, and the Response Was a Kind of Subtle Hell" Katherine Miller wrote that she thinks Pence is disappearing, politically, before our eyes. Here are several excerpts about Pence:

Mr. Pence’s experience highlights the dangers for the individual and the public. In his book,* Mr. Esper (fired Defense Secratary Mark Esper) describes the way Mr. Pence represented a sane, normal presence in meetings. But, Mr. Esper writes, he could never discern how much their boss even considered the vice president’s views: “He was part cheerleader and part sounding board, though I could never tell how much influence he really had with Trump. He often didn’t say much in meetings that the president attended, and he rarely disagreed with Trump in front of us. 

She went on: 

And now, as Mr. Pence runs for president himself, the reward for coming through in a central moment of American history is a kind of surround-sound aversion.

At first, at that dinner in Iowa last week, Mr. Pence talked brightly, in the expectation of applause, which came, sort of, at muted levels, muted even for the kinds of things — like his abortion politics — that resulted in applause for others.

This was tepid, indifferent clapping, a kind of subtle hell worse than booing, where people who knew you have forgotten you. Mr. Pence kept talking, the delivery staying even and polished, the brightness fading, talking about restoring civility. “So I thank you for hearing me out tonight,” he said, almost somber.

*Espers book is titled A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Time"

Back to Pence's chances to win the nomination:

I wonder if Republican voters may reassess their views about Pence being the best candidate to beat President Biden.  It could happen considering the other candidates:

Click to enlarge

Compared to the above candiates Pence has a lot going for him. 

He has as much name recognition as DeSantis who now polls a distant second to Trump.  DeSantis has wedded himself to being anti-woke which is not something all that many American really care about. 

What Pence can do and DeSantis can't do is carefully and not always honestly play up his role as Trump's vice president. Pence can truthfully claim that he is the only GOP candidate with experience at the highest level of government and run on being the most competent and qualified of all the candidates who will bring conservative polciies and values back to the White House.

Again, Pence's chances depend on Trump being signficantly wounded so he'd be postioning himself to move from second choice to first choice if Trump was bleeding out.

Of the above candidates who are currently polling the highest, Pence never picked a fight with Mickey Mouse and some hyped up hysterical war against woke. In addition while Pence and DeSantis are both uninpsiring and boring, at least Pence is likable.

Scott and Haley are fairly well known, but Pence is not black and not to disparage Scott for something he can't do anything about some people may be turned off by his teeth and gummy smile (see article). Of course, when it comes to Haley the misogynists in the party probaby aren't ready for a female president let alone one who is an Indian American. I'd doubt many would favor an unknown named Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy whose parents also immigrated from India no matter how slick and intelligent he sounds. In fact that might be held against him as much as a color of his skin. Here he is explaining his opposition to woke in a manner I doubt too many Republican would understand.

Scott and Haley so far have been sucking up to Trump and appear to be hoping he'll select them to be his running mate. To flip-flop and become anti-Trump would seem like a betrayal, plus who wants someone who thought they were only qualified to be as useless a vice president as Pence was.

Christie is well known and of all the candidates in the crowded field is the most qualified to be president since he is both very smart and knows how to govern a large state.  I can't see him as having a chance at the nomination. He could, however, help Pence by being an attack dog for him in the debates and campaign in his aggressive New Jersey way by hammering home how unacceptable Trump is both as a candidate and as a potential president.

Pence could claim credit for all the things Trump did that poll well. Sure, all he did was stand next to him and smile at him like he was the new messiah, but who knows for sure that it wasn't Pence that gave Trump all the ideas they liked. Trump would poo-poo such claims but Pence could remind voters that Trump was a chronic liar and, chosing his words carefully, say that he had a history of coming up with dumb ideas and that there's no proof he thought up polcies people approved of by himself.

Pence was smart in using a passage in Trump's indictment as a branding opportunity. According to the federal indictment, in one conversation on January 1, 2021, Trump told Pence he was “too honest” when the vice president said he lacked the authority to change the results. It is a clear counterpoint to Trump being known as a notorious and inveterate liar.

If I was advising Pence, knowing the irony of the phrase, I'd tell him to hang in there. 

I might even suggest that Pence, not known for a sense of humor, take to wearing a lapel pin like this 1970's solid pewter chrome effect Hangmans Noose outlaw biker metal pin badge. It was a popular symbol amongst 1%er outlaw bikers since the Sixties. It is available on Ebay for $12.00.

This would make sence since Pence is known for owning and riding Harley'swhich he does at various biker events. 

Republican's seem to love Harley's though from what I can tell from those who rode them at Sen.Joni Ernst's 2023 Roast and Ride.  Pence is the only current GOP presidential candiate to own and ride them.