Campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination is not going well for Mike Pence. The former vice president's pitch to voters is that he stood up for the Constitution in the face of pressure to do otherwise. But even as he avoids saying who was exerting the pressure and for what purpose, Pence finds that Republican voters remember all too well — and they very much do not like all this talk about putting honor and the law ahead of stealing an election for Donald Trump.
"Do you ever second-guess yourself? That was a Constitutional right that you had to send those votes back to the states," a woman griped at Pence during an Iowa meet-and-greet at a pizza restaurant on Wednesday. She was, of course, flat wrong, and Pence told her as much.
"The Constitution affords no authority for the vice president or anyone else to reject votes or return votes to the states," Pence pushed back. He even sucked it up and mentioned Trump by name, saying, "President Trump was wrong about my authority that day and he's still wrong."
Pence's willingness to stand firm on this point has drawn him praise in the mainstream media, especially from the legion of never-Trump Republicans who are well-represented on cable news but not much elsewhere. Certainly, Pence has distinguished himself from most Republican leadership, especially people like Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who voted in favor of overturning the election even after Trump sent a bloodthirsty mob to the Capitol on January 6. Pence did hang in and make sure the election was certified that day, which showed a sense of duty lacking in most of his party.
What all this praise fails to take into account, however, is just how much responsibility Pence bears for getting the GOP to a place where January 6 was even possible.
When Trump sold the Big Lie about President Joe Biden stealing the 2020 election to his voters, he was building on decades of Republican devotion to disinformation-fueled propaganda. Starting at least in the 80s, if not earlier, a culture of lying took root in the Republican Party. There were corporate-friendly lies about everything from cigarettes to climate change. The Christian right pushed lies about evolutionary biology and sexual health. Right-wing media normalized conspiracy theories, like Donald Trump's birther campaign harassing Barack Obama for his long-form birth certificate. Pence was an eager member of the liar corps of the GOP from the get-go.
When so few Republican politicians have to reap any of what they sowed, it's nice to see at least one of them brought lower by the immoral culture he cultivated.
Even by the GOP's low standards, Pence spent his career as an especially dishonest operator. He even did his time as a Rush Limbaugh-knockoff in the 90s, hosting an AM talk radio show in Indiana, where he would frequently rail on about how adulterers had no right to be in political or military leadership. Of course, he would later be the vice president for the most unapologetic adulterer in America's political history.
Pence loved every flavor of B.S. on offer by corporate lobbyists and Christian zealots. It would almost be easier to make a list of topics he didn't lie about, except for the very real threat it would be an empty set. In a precursor to Trump's inauguration crowd size lies, Pence indignantly used his talk show to insist that the crowd at a car race was bigger than it actually was. But that's on the more harmless side of his lies. On many more serious topics, Pence embraced all the damaging right-wing lies.
"Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn't kill," Pence wrote in a 2001 column posted to a campaign website.
"Global warming is a myth," he wrote in 2000. "There, I said it," he added as if he was some great truth-teller, instead a liar misleading people about science. He was less bold about his anti-science views when pressed by Jake Tapper of CNN in 2019, but still dodged the question of whether he accepts the reality of climate change.
Trump represented a continuation of a project Pence had devoted his entire life towards.
When serving in Congress, Pence would rant against the teaching of evolution in biology, claiming "Charles Darwin never thought of evolution as anything other than a theory. He hoped that someday it would be proven by the fossil record but did not live to see that, nor have we." As with most other things Pence says, he was lying. He misrepresented what the word "theory" means in science, pretending it had less certainty than it actually does. And, contrary to his claims, the fossil record has shown evolutionary theory to be true.
In 2002, during a forum hosted by MTV, Pence railed against then-Secretary of State Colin Powell for correctly stating that condoms protect against sexually transmitted infections. "Condoms are a very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases," Pence lied. (The Centers for Disease Control notes that "Consistent and correct use of latex condoms is highly effective in preventing sexual transmission of HIV.") He then lamented that the problem with condoms is they are "modern," which is closer to his true objection to them.
In the 90s, Pence lied about homosexuality, claiming "the great vast majority of the psychological community says homosexuality at a very minimum is a choice by the individual, and at the maximum, is a learned behavior." In reality, as CNN reported, "The American Psychological Association said in 1992 that data did not support the view that homosexuality was a choice."
Pence was part of a multi-decade effort by Republican leaders and pundits to train their base to believe that lying is not only okay but totally justified if it's done in service of the party's political goals. He would have denied the existence of gravity if he thought it would help a corporation evade regulation or promote the Christian right's agenda. It's no surprise he was so eager to buddy up to Trump, despite his past moralistic posturing against adultery. Trump represented a continuation of a project Pence had devoted his entire life towards, which is dismantling the value of empirical facts in the realm of political discourse.
It would be one thing if Pence had renounced his lying ways and was reckoning with how his own disinformation laid the groundwork for the Big Lie. But either he's too stupid or cynical — likely, a bit of both — to think about how his own contributions to the GOP culture of lying made Trump possible. Now Pence has to squirm, as Republican voters voice feelings of betrayal that Pence finally found a line he wouldn't cross. It's a pleasure knowing that Pence will finish his political career hated by everyone across the political spectrum. It's far less punishment than he deserves, of course. But when so few Republican politicians have to reap any of what they sowed, it's nice to see at least one of them brought lower by the immoral culture he cultivated.
