GOP base prefers the guy who attempted the coup--not the one who stood up to it.
Pence drops out of 2024 race
On Saturday, Mike Pence dropped out of the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. This was not a surprise given the reality that today’s GOP loves the guy who attempted to overturn the 2020 election, not the guy who stood up to Donald Trump in defense of our Constitution.
Pence is no hero. But in a time when so many in Trump world were on board with his attempted coup and were pressuring the then Vice President to prevent Biden’s certification on January 6, 2021, when Congress met, he does deserve credit for refusing to go along with the scheme.
Since then, Pence began to openly slam Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 campaign. He first began publicly criticizing Trump’s coup attempt in February 2022, telling a gathering of conservatives: “President Trump is wrong…I had no right to overturn the election.”
Once the 2024 campaign heated up, Pence went further in calling out Trump’s treasonous plot. In August, while on Fox News, Pence stated bluntly that “the American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisers didn’t just ask me to pause. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.”
And at the first GOP presidential debate in August, Pence declared, Trump “asked me to put him over the Constitution, and I chose the Constitution and I always will."
What was the response of GOP voters? They were angered that Pence refused to help Trump end our democratic Republic. In August, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Trumpers screamed at Pence calling him a “traitor” and “sell out.” One MAGA fan even yelled at Pence: “Why didn’t you uphold the Constitution, sir?” As Pence correctly responded, “I upheld the constitution.”
A week later in Iowa, Pence was again heckled by Trump supporters for being a “traitor.” Another Trump fan yelled, “MAGA everyday, Pence is a traitor.”
Of course, no one should be surprised that the GOP base is angry with Pence given that on Jan 6 he refused to join Trump’s coup. That led to Trump’s terrorists chanting during the Capitol siege: “Hang Mike Pence!” And worse, as we learned from the House Jan 6 hearings, when Trump heard on Jan 6th that the crowd was chanting to kill his vice president, he told an aide that Pence “deserves it.”
Since then, Trump has publicly defended his MAGA terrorists and even vowed to pardon them. And the person running second in the GOP presidential field, Ron DeSantis with on average of 13 percent support, has also pledged if elected to review the convictions of Jan 6 attackers and pardon them. That means nearly 75% of the GOP base is supporting candidates who will pardon the MAGA terrorists who attacked our Capitol on Jan 6 in an effort to keep Trump in power despite losing the 2020 election. This tells you that today’s GOP is now controlled by the fascist movement known as MAGA.
Alarmingly for our Republic, MAGA now also controls the House of Representatives. As GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz boasted last week when it became clear that the anti-democratic, religious supremacist Mike Johnson was going to win the Speaker’s race: “MAGA is ascendant.” Gaetz gleefully called the new Speaker, “MAGA Mike Johnson,” adding that the message to all is that MAGA is “where the power of the Republican party truly lies.”
MAGA is not just where the power is in the Republican party, MAGA is the GOP. There is no longer a Republican party as we once knew it. That has been replaced by an openly anti-democratic, white nationalist, fascist movement that seeks to impose their religious beliefs upon us by law.
True, there are still some in the new MAGA party that are more traditional Republicans, but they are not only vastly outnumbered, the energy of the party is all MAGA. That is why the vile Marjorie Taylor Greene—who was only in her first term in Congress—raised the 4th most money in the 2022 election cycle of all the 200 plus Republicans in the House—raking in almost $13 million dollars. Just ahead of her with nearly $14 million raised was Trump’s coup co-conspirator, Jim Jordan.
Near the end of Pence’s speech Saturday announcing he would drop out of the race, he made a plea for the GOP base to “give our country a Republican standard-bearer that will, as Lincoln said, appeal to the better angels of our nature.”
That sentiment is laughable given today’s GOP. The Trump loving base does not want a person who will “appeal to the better angels of our nature.” Instead, they love Trump because he appeals to what we might refer to as their “worst” of their nature. But In reality, Trump just gave them permission to be the despicable people they always wanted to be: cruel, bigoted, and anti-democratic. That is MAGA and MAGA is the GOP.
Pence was a terrible governor and on his way to a humiliating defeat in his re-election bid when plucked from that fate by Bannon and Flynn to shore up Christo-fascist, white supremacist support for Trump. Whatever happens next for him, it should mean that we never have to hear him speak or offer any opinion on public policy again. Obscurity is his well deserved fate.
Imagine a world where a head magat is disowned by his host creator! That's one lonely walk down the road to perdition. "Big Mac" has spoken......hold the Mayo, Mike.