Vice President Pence and his Constitutional Role

Illinois Review ^ | February 11, AD 2022 | John F Di Leo

[Responsibility2nd]

There are plenty of never Trumper’s here at Free Republic who are glad Pence did what he did. They claim he had a constitutional obligation. They are wrong.

[Smellin Salt]

He had a constitutional requirement to reject and therefore turn back to the states where the vote results had obviously been altered.

[pacificus]

Right, every time pence’s name is mentioned it must be cowardly Mike pence, who certified a stolen election.

[Responsibility2nd]

There were legal challenges still pending, and as a result Pence had no business certifying electoral college results.

Which we knew then and we know now were fraudulent.

[AnthonySoprano]

.
Strip away the Electors - strip away that move totally - he wouldn’t take his President’s calls, he ignored the WH legal team, he didn’t ask for action on the part of the DoJ to investigate the Dominion machines, and he did.not attend a Trump celebration, but did attend Biden Galas, and he ran out and sold a book by hawking his position of going against Trump, securing several Million and paid Cash for a new Mansion. Got a no-show job supporting the Deep State, and said the Bible authorized him to effectively promote and boost the Biden Foreign Cash Machine and the Pelosi Gravy train in DC.

God just wanted him in a Mansion high fiving Dementia Joe and craven Nancy Pelosi.

[AnthonySoprano]

Ask Mike Flynn about Deep State Pence.

[TigersEye]

Not to overturn an election, not to stage a coup... but to prevent an election from being stolen, to prevent a coup from occurring.

All he had to do was to declare what everyone knew: that there was a cloud over certain states' elector slates, and turn the question back to the state legislatures of those states, asking them to either approve or replace the slate of electors that their bureaucrats had sent up for the count.

Yup.

[Radix]

Pence is slime and that was recognized by many long before that January 6 debacle.

[AnthonySoprano]

.
Strange how Pence is linked to MCarthy’s pal, and Hunter Biden is also linked to Luntz.

Seems Luntz, who is gay, is directly connected to McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Mike Pence, and Hunter Biden.

.

[!1776!]

Well, the deranged like to have a scapegoat.

Trump tee’d up his loss during debate 1, then knocked it out of the park in debate 2.

Anyone who confuses (or uses as an excuse) what was accomplished while he was in office with his completely abysmal ability to connect and not come across as an asshole is an idiot that prefers red meat quotes over electoral results.

[AnthonySoprano]

I wonder if Gen Milley is gay?

That would make put a different spin on his dinners with Lindsey Graham.

[TigersEye]

Trump couldn’t connect with the people? That is your argument?

LOL

[libh8er]

The only reason Trump picked this loser was the Access Hollywood tape. Were there no other Republicans with strong Christian credentials who believed in his MAGA agenda ?

[kvanbrunt2]

I think the states like PA my state failed to give the ammunition. i.e. a second slate or a vote of some kind to decertify the Secretary of states certification of the electors based on the fraudulent results. About 29K more mail in votes counted than mail in voters in the SURE system just in delaware county alone, 400K statewide as Frank Ryan’s audit shows. But no state legislature set forth any alternate slate of electors or decertification for Pence to use. My disappointment with Pence is that he is using the commie speak when he says he couldn’t overthrow the election. His job was to be the final arbiter of what was actually going on at the state level. I think he had the same issues with his covid team.

[AnthonySoprano]

.
Can you imagine Tim Kaine not taking Hillary’s calls, and ignoring her strategy?

Can you imagine Kamala Harris deciding to not place the tie breaking Vote for Joe in the Senate, but voting with Republicans against Biden’s bill, defeating it?

Can you imagne Al Gore siding with Ken Starr and saying Clinton had a troubling pattern of behavior?

He attended Biden’s gala events!

.

[TigersEye]

But no state legislature set forth any alternate slate of electors or decertification for Pence to use.

But that's the point. He had the authority and the duty to ASK for an alternate slate of electors. In effect, Pence's inaction deprived those state legislatures of the authority to act.

[Renfrew]

There were a lot of screw ups in 2020. The truth is the left had been preparing the steal for four years and we had no real plan to counter it.

Rather than looking back, I would like to see more articles preparing for 2024. What is the strategy? If the GOP has the House and Senate is there a plan to prevent that election from being certified if it is stolen?

[Political Junkie Too]

Let me tell you where Vice President Pence made his mistake.

Pence treated the January 6 joint session of Congress as an event, not a process. As an event, he would just show up; as a process, he would assert his position throughout.

Throughout American history, scholars would always talk about how the Constitutional separation of powers was a tug of war between the branches: we sometimes had a strong President and a weak Congress, and sometimes we had a strong Congress and a weak President. It came down to the personality of the people in office and the needs of the country at the time. The branches were always accusing the others as engaging in "power grabs," and would often try to preempt a branch from acting strongly by prematurely leveling this charge.

I think most people would agree that Pence exhibits a weak personality compared to the other senior office holders in government, and would shy away from being seen as a "power grabber."

Setting that aside, let's look at the so-called "ceremonial roles" in the Constitution. The author is correct that we should not expect high office officials to neuter themselves in ceremonial roles. The Framers of the Constitution would not have done that to the people who achieved the highest offices in the nation. If these roles devolved into ceremonial care-taker positions, it's because the people who held them at pivotal times were weak and not assertive people, or they chose to subordinate themselves to another branch of government.

The most ceremonial role in the Constitution is that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who presides over the impeachment trial in the Senate. A strong Senate has, over time, cowered the Chief Justice into being a clerk of the court, reducing the meaning of what it is to preside over a court. A strong Chief Justice could easily assert traditional court roles and make the Senate act for or against the Chief Justice (see how Tom Harkin (D-IA) bullied Chief Justice William Rehnquist during the Bill Clinton trial, playing on Rehnquist's reputation for being easygoing and non-confrontational).

As an event, the Chief Justice could just show up and keep time. As a process, the Chief Justice could participate in advance of the trial, laying down his expectations on how the trial would proceed, and telling Senators what to expect from him as the presiding officer. Look at how Chief Justice John Roberts told the Senate that he would not preside over the second trial of Donald Trump.

Vice President Pence should have treated the role of presiding over the counting of the Electoral College ballots as a process, too. Instead of just showing up on January 6 and gaveling in a joint session of Congress, he should have asserted his role all along, reminding Congress of what he will do when January 6 arrives if certain things do not happen between Election Day, the day of the Electoral College vote, and the day of counting the votes in Congress.

As the steward of the entire process, Pence should have spoken out immediately after Election Day, calling out the irregularities and telling the state legislatures that they should be asserting their Title 3 Chapter 1 powers immediately, because the clock was ticking.

• He should have directed the state legislatures that Title 3 Chapter 1 § 2 lets them choose electors if Election Day failed to produce a definitive result.
• He should have directed the state legislatures that Title 3 Chapter 1 § 5 establishes a timeline for resolving controversies in the elections, and that the legislatures are expected to act on such controversies when their plenary powers were grabbed by a strong state executive branch.
• He should have directed states that Title 3 Chapter 1 § 15 has processes to resolve conflicting slates of Electors received by Congress, and that Congress will choose the Electors they want if the states do not act first.

By the time of the joint session of Congress on January 6, Pence would have already asserted himself in his role by laying down the expectations of all the participants in the process that have a role to play prior to and on January 6. Pence did not do this.

Pence just showed up on the January 6 event to perform a ceremonial role of opening envelopes and reading votes, because he is not an assertive person and he chose not to be engaged in the process from beginning to end.

-PJ

[virgil]

Trump is clumsy with words, and that’s a liability when the opposition makes every misplaced expression into an impeachable offense. The cancel assholes also helps them with that. But at least Trump can talk on his own, memorize his speeches and think on his feet. He does his homework and did the people’s business. As for the debates, Basement Joe Ribbentrop Biden didn’t look so great either.