Pence is out

Anyone who takes prayer seriously will take former VP Mike Pence's description of himself seriously. Last weekend he shocked everyone by officially dropping out of contention--I'm not sure he was ever in--to become the Republican nominee for President, did so "after much prayer and deliberation," he said. No one doubts that. It's not hard to imagine Pence on his knees beseeching the Lord for His good word on what must have been, for the former VP, a difficult decision.

His numbers were failing, and his coffers were empty. He was finished before he was finished.

I feel sorry for Trump's silver-haired, faithful sidekick.

Somewhat. 

He's not a victim. Given his ample religiosity, he must have known that Donald Trump's choosing him as VP was pure politics, an attempt by the Orange Man to harvest the Christian sheaves in the electorate, the immense evangelical base who had ample misgivings about a thrice-married bully who bragged about his sexual accomplishments. With Saint Mike Pence smiling at his side, Trump isolated his own piggishness enough to appear normally moral, which he, of course, never was. Pence pitched in, bringing in the pious the President needed. Remember those early days when scores of evangelicals loved to call Donald J. Trump a "baby believer"? 

From day one Mike Pence got used; but then Pence used Trump too. He had to have smelled the rat, but he took the job because he knew--or thought he knew--that any aspirations he ever had for the Presidency would be enhanced by his being VP, whether Trump won the 2016 election or didn't (in fact, preferably that he didn't).

But he did, Pence at his side, nodding and grinning like a stooge. You can't help wonder what Mike Pence said to the Lord after ascending to office. I'm sure he asked for God's blessing on the Trump administration, but you can't help feeling that Pence's penchant for prayer had to be altered. Did he pray to keep Muslims out of the country, to give significant revenues to the rich, money they didn't need? Did he pray for the Mexicans to pay for the wall?  

I'm guessing he prayed for the Trump. He'd have to, really--he was and is a believer. But you can't help wondering if he didn't ask the Lord, please, please to change the bully and his belligerence, to heal that forked tongue. What Pence asked about Trump is between the former VP and the Lord, but I'd love a transcript.

On January 6th everything changed. Pence knew very well what his boss wanted him to do, and, au contraire, what the boss's chorus wanted. He'd been coached. If he wanted to stay in office, he needed to act, to toss out the tally. After prayer, I'm sure, he did the right thing and chose the constitution over the great deceiver. He said nothing, thereby making a moral determination that preserved the rule of law but ended his Presidential aspirations, made him public enemy #1 for the 30 million cultic Trumpettes. When he chose to do nothing, his political aspirations went dead in the water--if they hadn't been before. 

He did nothing and therefore did everything. He chose the constitutionally-mandated dumb show job and not the slates of false electors. He did the right thing, undoing the wrong thing he'd done four years earlier in accepting the VP job in the first place, a job he was given because he was such an ardent public pray-er, a saint the Great Sinner needed to mount the support of millions of other pray-without-ceasing Trumpettes.

Life holds lots of opportunities to use this old maxim, but I haven't employed it for a long time, so I'll take it out of the attic because it fits. Goes like this: "He who sups with the Devil had best use a long spoon."

When a man who goes to his knees as often as Pence seems to say he does, the day he accepted Trump's offer to be his VP is the day he signed away his fate, not to the Lord but to the darkness. 

I do feel sorry for him. He's come to the end of the road politically. You would have had to be blind not to see that coming. More Republicans hate him than like him.

But Mike Pence was never a victim. Never was, and never will be.