It’s
time for Mike Pence to choose: Trump, or the truth
Opinion by
Contributing columnist
Dec. 22, 2020 at 6:26 p.m. CST
Mike Pence’s conduct
on Jan. 6 matters.
Not to the outcome of
the presidential election, but to the process of its resolution. The vice
president can either facilitate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, or he can
resist it.
Which he chooses will
either help or hinder the Republican Party’s recovery from the electoral
denialism that afflicts three-fourths of its voters.
The Constitution
directs states to send their electoral college votes to Congress to be counted
in a special joint session. An 1887
statute requires Pence, as president of the Senate, to chair this
joint session.
Typically, the
session is a formality, but this year, a group of House Republicans, led by
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), are planning to use the event to try to force Congress
to vote on whether to accept or reject the electoral college results. If they
can get just one senator to object to the electoral votes of a state, then both
congressional chambers will have to debate and vote on whether to accept that
state’s submission.
This is a fool’s
errand. Even if they find a senator to go along with them, both chambers will
certainly affirm Biden’s victory. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) knows this, so he has made clear that he hopes no senator will join
Brooks, to avoid forcing his GOP caucus to go on record as to whether they are
with Trump or against him.
Tommy Tuberville,
soon-to-be Republican senator from Alabama, has suggested he will join Brooks, thereby scoring points with Trump. But GOP
leadership, including Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), is conveying
McConnell’s strong wishes against this.
If McConnell can keep
his caucus in line, he can prevent a debacle for Republicans — but only if
Pence sides with McConnell and thus against Trump’s wishes.
Pence can wreck
McConnell’s strategy — even if no GOP senator joins Brooks’s hopeless cause.
That’s because on Dec. 14, Republicans in up to seven states —
without any official status whatsoever — purported to cast votes for Trump,
claiming Trump would have won their states were it not for fraud.
Although
transparently farcical, these rival submissions have reportedly been sent to
Pence, who must present them at the Jan. 6 session. The law calls for Congress to
consider all “papers purporting to be certificates of electoral votes,” however
frivolous they may be.
Pence could support
McConnell by asking Congress to reject these ersatz — even delusional — documents. Pence would
propose that the joint session simply count, without objection, the obviously
official votes from these states. This would follow the model set by Richard
Nixon, who, in the same position as Pence for the 1960 election, handled
conflicting submissions of electoral votes from Hawaii. Nixon asked whether
there was any objection to counting the Hawaiian electoral votes cast for
Kennedy; there being none, that’s what happened.
No one should object
if Pence proposes the equivalent treatment of Biden votes. But even if House
members do, without a senator’s objection, Pence’s proposal dictates the
disposition of the state’s submissions. McConnell would get his wish.
But suppose, upon
announcing rival returns from a state, Pence says something like, “I believe
the votes cast for President Trump are the true votes, and I propose that
Congress count those.” This would force a senator and representative,
presumably Democrats, to object in writing to Pence’s proposal, and the two
chambers would separate to debate and vote on this objection.
Should this happen,
the Senate and House will certainly agree to count the official electoral votes
for Biden and discard the crackpot votes for Trump. But Pence’s
maneuver would make GOP senators take stands on whether they’re with Biden or
Trump, even if McConnell manages to convince his entire caucus not to object to
Biden’s votes.
Pence should not do
this. Reports of his meeting with Brooks and other House
members on Monday to discuss strategies for Jan. 6 raise concerns that he
might. Although the vice president may want to use his role then to further
prove his persistent loyalty to Trump, doing so would exacerbate the horrific
damage that Trump has done to the Republican Party and the entire country by
his assault on the truth of his defeat.
In an exercise of
demagoguery unparalleled in U.S. history, Trump’s incessant and utterly
evidence-free claims of a “stolen” election have spurred calls for martial law. The ongoing danger to democracy
is an ingrained unwillingness to let an electoral opponent prevail.
As Gabriel Sterling,
a Republican election official from Georgia, warned three weeks ago, such behavior
risks violence as well as subverting self-government. “It has to stop,”
Sterling said.
But it hasn’t
stopped. Far from it. Trump and his allies are exploring increasingly ominous schemes to “overturn” the verdict of the voters.
Pence could help
liberate the GOP and the nation from this escalating electoral hysteria.
By urging Congress to
accept Biden’s victory, and to reject rival submissions aimed at derailing this
valid result, Pence can align himself with McConnell in endeavoring to restore
rationality within Republican ranks.
Trump or
truth? Pence must choose. History will judge.