Posted on 08/09/2023 7:13:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If you once served as Vice President of the United States, polling below 5% in your own party's presidential primary can trigger a stream of unbridled bitterness.
Case in point: Mike Pence, who, in a Real Clear Politics poll published through August 2, 2023, polled at 4.8 percent among Republican voters, trailing the previously-unknown Vivek Ramaswamy, who had 5.2 percent.
Like a freezing cold bucket of reality splashed onto Pence’s face, losing to a 37-year-old entrepreneur who, six months ago, nobody ever heard of, has apparently unleashed the floodgates of animosity harbored deep within. Embittered by his demise, Pence now fumes against President Trump, the man to whom he owes the Vice Presidency, seemingly siding with rogue prosecutor Jack Smith.
“I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence told CNN. ”And on that day, President Trump asked me to put him over the Constitution. But I chose the Constitution. And I always will.” He rambles on. “Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
Really, Pence? You “chose the Constitution,” did you? That’s your spin? The President asked you to “overturn” the election? To put himself over the Constitution? He said that?
Actually, the President suggested sending questionable electors back to state legislatures, for proper consideration, in states where highly irregular tactics had seemingly undermined the election.
If, after further consideration, Biden still won, then Biden won.
Despite Pence’s “I was for the Constitution and Trump wasn’t” nonsense, the truth is the Constitution doesn't address the issue, one way or the other. It isn’t like some constitutional clause decrees that “the President shall not ask the Vice President to send electors back to certain states for certification or clarification.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
[snip]
Similarly, in Hawaii, official results showed Nixon winning by a small margin of 141 votes, with the state being called for him early Wednesday morning. Acting Governor James Kealoha certified the Republican electors, and they cast Hawaii's three electoral votes for Nixon. However, clear discrepancies existed in the official electoral tabulations, and Democrats petitioned for a recount in Hawaii circuit court.[74] The court challenge was still ongoing at the time of the Electoral Count Act's safe harbor deadline, but Democratic electors still convened at the ʻIolani Palace on the constitutionally-mandated date of December 19 and cast their votes for Kennedy.[74] The recount, completed before Christmas, resulted in Kennedy being declared winner by 115 votes. On December 30, the circuit court ruled that Hawaii's three electoral votes should go to Kennedy. It was decided that a new certificate was necessary, with only two days remaining before Congress convened on January 6, 1961, to count and certify the Electoral College votes. A letter to Congress saying a certificate was on the way was rushed out by registered air mail. Both Democrat and Republican electoral votes from Hawaii were presented for counting on January 6, 1961, and Vice President Nixon who presided over the certification, graciously, and saying "without the intent of establishing a precedent",[75] requested unanimous consent that the Democratic votes for Kennedy to be counted.
[snip]
Every battleground state had an opportunity to do that -- BEFORE January 6th.
I said right here on FR back in 2020 that the most prudent, and urgent, approach for any of those state legislatures to take would be to convene and vote on its own slate of electors -- even an outlandish one for a candidate that couldn't possibly have won the popular vote in that state. The important thing to note is that this would have had to be done before the electors convened in the state capitals for the Electoral College vote on December 14th of 2020.
Once that date had passed and no legislature had taken any action, anything done on January 6th of 2021 was a futile waste of time.
I can’t that wet dishcloth, Pence and he doesn’t stand a chance but why is Ramaswamy doing any better? Ramaswamy wants a 59% death tax. That should send Ramaswamy packing.
The fact is, most VPs would never think to oppose their former boss in a primary. Not just because it would be bad form, but because if they had a lick of sense, they would know they couldn’t beat them, or they wouldn’t have wound up as VP in the first place.
“3. What authority does Congress have to compel state legislatures to do anything?”
Well, Congress can just say “do what you like, but without clarification, we can’t count these electoral votes”. Pretty sure most states would find that a compelling reason to do something.
Read the U.S. Constitution. Congress has no authority to do such a thing.
You give Congress the power to do this, and fascists like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will be refusing to accept electoral votes from Republican states for any damn reason they wish.
And if a state legislature convenes in a manner that violates its own STATE constitution, then any action it takes isn't legitimate anyway.
RE: Congress has absolutely ZERO authority to call a state legislature into session.
But Pence has the authority to send the questionable results back to the states. What the state legislature does after he does is up to them. But Pence did not even bother to exercise that authority
Trump had no real support in the Congress to contest the election at that point. The Democrats controlled the House, and McConnell controlled the Senate.
If Pence had done anything to disrupt or delay the vote counting, he and Trump both would have been immediately impeached by the House, and likely convicted in the Senate within days.
The House immediately impeached him anyway, even after Biden was officially declared the winner. The Senate just didn’t go along, saying the matter was moot AT THAT POINT.
RE: If Pence had done anything to disrupt or delay the vote counting, he and Trump both would have been immediately impeached by the House, and likely convicted in the Senate within days.
This is the MORAL QUESTION: If you knew that an election was fraudulent in several states, would you exercise your duty based on the authority given to you by the constitution despite a possible impeachment?
Or would you, for fear of being impeached, simply let the fraud go uninvestigated?
So, the worst case is a VP gets impeached and Biden wins anyway, but so what? Where’s the dishonor there if you are actually in the right?
Let history be the judge. But act according to your conscience.
Men like Sir Thomas More did at the cost of his life.
Sometimes, you have to do the right thing........and pence didn’t
This was the prevailing view in the Senate at the time - that Trump just hadn’t proven his case.
Many of his cases were thrown out due to a lack of standing, which many lawyers including Trump loyalist Robert Barnes have admitted, is only obtained AFTER you are declared the official loser of an election, and can then show damages, which then give you the necessary standing.
So on January 6, his chances of success were near zero. His only real chance of success, would have been to continue to gather concrete evidence of election theft, and present those in new court cases after he had legitimate standing.
The reason why he didn’t do that, is, in my opinion, because Trump only wants to fight his fights in the political arena, not the legal one, where strict rules apply.
RE: So on January 6, his chances of success were near zero. His only real chance of success, would have been to continue to gather concrete evidence of election theft, and present those in new court cases after he had legitimate standing.
Leave the courts out of it for now.
I am not interested in chances, I am interested in WHAT OUGHT TO BE DONE despite the odds.
Regardless of the chances, whether zero or near it, a quick search of the Constitution reveals no reference to the word “ceremonial.” when it comes to the Vice President’s role.
The point is — WAS THERE CREDIBLE EVIDENCE OF ELECTION FRAUD IN SEVERAL STATES?
If there was ( and evidence shows that there were ), Pence needs to exercise his duty and send the questionable electors back to state legislatures, for proper consideration, in states where highly irregular tactics had seemingly undermined the election.
If, after further consideration, Biden still won, then Biden won.
This is NOT undermining the constitution, it is FOLLOWING the constitution.
No, worst case, is BOTH Pence and Trump get not only impeached, but convicted, and forcibly removed from office. Then criminal charges immediately filed, and they are held without bail. The criminal charges he is facing now pale in comparison to what they would have been criminally charged with then.
He could only do that if Congress authorized it … and even then there was no legal authority for them to do anything other than ask the legislature for clarification.
Once the electors were certified on December 14th there was no way to change them. That’s why any action taken by a state legislature had to be done BEFORE that date.
What would have happened if (for example) Pennsylvania’s legislature had voted to certify the Trump electors on January 8th? This would have been subject to multiple court challenges even in PA state courts — without even any consideration for Federal court challenges.
There was evidence that all states did not follow the laws in their states for how to gather ballots from voters, due to the covid scare. This presented a great opportunity for fraud, but opportunity is not fraud in and of itself. Fraud is proving that a vote was placed under a person’s name, that is contrary to who that person voted for, or was a vote that was placed when that voter did not even vote. Very little of that has been proven, according to Trump’s own campaign, and lawyers, and the 2 outside firms he hired to investigate it.
How is an election certified? From an article in theconversatio.com:
“At the end of the Senate’s electoral vote count, the vice president announces the results and asks if there are any objections.
In 2001 Democratic House representatives tried to block Florida’s highly contested electoral votes for George W. Bush.
That effort failed, because objections must be signed by both a member of the House and the Senate before being voted on by both chambers of Congress.”
Sounds like the Vice President has no power over the vote certification process.
And that’s exactly why the legal challenges went nowhere. Unless the person in question was deceased before the vote was cast, there’s no way to prove this kind of fraud unless the perpetrator comes out openly and admits it.
Mike Dense is so sorry he can’t even catch up to Vivek what’s his name
That’s how sorry that POS Dense is
RE: There was evidence that all states did not follow the laws in their states for how to gather ballots from voters, due to the covid scare.
THAT in and of itself should have been sufficient reason to send the election results back to the state ( e.g. Pennsylvania ).
RE: This presented a great opportunity for fraud, but opportunity is not fraud in and of itself.
That is why if there is EVIDENCE of fraud, we need to find out how widespread it is in that critical state to see if it was enough to swing the results unfairly to the so-called “winner”.
Trump, like millions of Americans, questioned the election process. After all, six states Trump was winning reportedly shut down at 10 PM. In all those states, votes trickled in over the following days for Biden — one of many major red flags from the 2020 election.
Perhaps Pence should learn that defending the Constitution might mean not turning a blind eye, without question, to questionable circumstances that on the surface resemble rampant cheating.
The state has to consider evidence on what we saw in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where election officials shut down, sent Republican poll watchers home at 10 PM, then pulled out pull long black boxes of ballots and ran them through counting machines with no Republican observers present.
Just one example.
The 1877 Act did not limit the VP’s role only to something ceremonial, but instead, established a procedure for handling competing electors from each state.
The Act established a special Electoral Commission with fifteen members, including five members from the Senate, five members from the House, and five Supreme Court Justices.
Pence could have arguably sent disputed electors to that Commission. Instead, he acted as if he had no authority to do anything.
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