Sunk Cost King Mike Pence Is Still Pushing the Big Lie After It Nearly Got Him Killed
Sure, the mob was chanting, "Hang Mike Pence." But if you want a future in Republican politics, you've got to push The Lie, and for the former vice president, there's no going back now.
_By Jack Holmes
Mar 3, 2021
washington, dc january 20, 2021 former vice president mike pence and his wife, karen pence, after the inauguration of president joe biden on january 20, 2021 in washington, dc photo by melina marathe washington postpool
Melina Mara / Getty Images
It's not exactly news that Donald Trump continues to hold some sway over the Republican Party, but Wednesday may have delivered a new high-water mark on that score. Michael Richard Pence, the former Vice President of the United States, is a living monument to the sunk-cost fallacy.
When his political career was close to death in Indiana, his interests momentarily converged with those of a comically heathen real-estate grifter from Manhattan who needed some Evangelical credentials on the Republican ticket.
Pence signed on to resuscitate his own ambitions without perhaps fully grasping that he'd also agreed to take out a mortgage on his soul. He certainly did not know that, by the end, his new boss would become president, lose his re-election bid, and send a mob to take him hostage—or possibly kill him—in an attempt to overturn the election. At various points, said mob could be heard chanting, "Hang Mike Pence."
And yet, after all that, it seems the same Mike Pence who narrowly avoided running into that mob within the Capitol can still be found pushing The Big Lie that fueled the insurrection. Pence's instincts for physical self-preservation have taken a back seat to those for political self-preservation, maybe because he feels he already sold too much of his dignity to get nothing out of the deal. Sunk cost. So here he is in an op-ed for the Daily Signal:
After an election marked by significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election.
That’s why when I was serving as presiding officer at the joint session of Congress certifying the Electoral College results, I pledged to ensure that all objections properly raised under the Electoral Count Act would be given a full hearing before Congress and the American people.
The tragic events of Jan. 6—the most significant being the loss of life and violence at our nation’s Capitol—also deprived the American people of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in America.
After a straightforward deployment of The Big Lie—Trump and his allies failed to prove across 60-plus court cases that there were "significant voting irregularities"—Pence offered that he was down to give all the bullshit objections from members of Congress a full hearing during the election certification process on January 6.
What he does not mention is that he refused his boss's demands to block the process and overturn the election himself, which is what got Trump tweeting about what a nasty guy the vice president was right as the mob was storming the building while calling for the vice president's extrajudicial execution. Details, details.
And then Pence says the real problem with the mob is that it disrupted a "substantive discussion" about election integrity, which apparently involves Republicans in Congress recycling the same baseless innuendo about voter fraud, something we've been treated to for months after anyway.
A truly substantive discussion of "election integrity" would grapple with the fact that Republicans at every level of government are trying to stop people from exercising the constitutional rights in order to entrench themselves in power.
Of course, the renewed purpose of The Big Lie is to provide justification for that voter-suppression push, so it ain't going away. Republicans cannot afford to let it die, because they do not believe they can win elections if more people are allowed to participate.
They've been saying this openly for a while now. Naturally, Pence's argument in the op-ed was winding up to a fact-free attack on H.R. 1. If you needed another reason the bill must pass, it's that the Sunk Cost King is lying wildly about it in the hopes he can be president four years from now. To paraphrase what his spouse reportedly told him on Election Night in 2016, I hope it was worth it, Mike.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a357112...nl23027898
Sure, the mob was chanting, "Hang Mike Pence." But if you want a future in Republican politics, you've got to push The Lie, and for the former vice president, there's no going back now.
_By Jack Holmes
Mar 3, 2021
washington, dc january 20, 2021 former vice president mike pence and his wife, karen pence, after the inauguration of president joe biden on january 20, 2021 in washington, dc photo by melina marathe washington postpool
Melina Mara / Getty Images
It's not exactly news that Donald Trump continues to hold some sway over the Republican Party, but Wednesday may have delivered a new high-water mark on that score. Michael Richard Pence, the former Vice President of the United States, is a living monument to the sunk-cost fallacy.
When his political career was close to death in Indiana, his interests momentarily converged with those of a comically heathen real-estate grifter from Manhattan who needed some Evangelical credentials on the Republican ticket.
Pence signed on to resuscitate his own ambitions without perhaps fully grasping that he'd also agreed to take out a mortgage on his soul. He certainly did not know that, by the end, his new boss would become president, lose his re-election bid, and send a mob to take him hostage—or possibly kill him—in an attempt to overturn the election. At various points, said mob could be heard chanting, "Hang Mike Pence."
And yet, after all that, it seems the same Mike Pence who narrowly avoided running into that mob within the Capitol can still be found pushing The Big Lie that fueled the insurrection. Pence's instincts for physical self-preservation have taken a back seat to those for political self-preservation, maybe because he feels he already sold too much of his dignity to get nothing out of the deal. Sunk cost. So here he is in an op-ed for the Daily Signal:
After an election marked by significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election.
That’s why when I was serving as presiding officer at the joint session of Congress certifying the Electoral College results, I pledged to ensure that all objections properly raised under the Electoral Count Act would be given a full hearing before Congress and the American people.
The tragic events of Jan. 6—the most significant being the loss of life and violence at our nation’s Capitol—also deprived the American people of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in America.
After a straightforward deployment of The Big Lie—Trump and his allies failed to prove across 60-plus court cases that there were "significant voting irregularities"—Pence offered that he was down to give all the bullshit objections from members of Congress a full hearing during the election certification process on January 6.
What he does not mention is that he refused his boss's demands to block the process and overturn the election himself, which is what got Trump tweeting about what a nasty guy the vice president was right as the mob was storming the building while calling for the vice president's extrajudicial execution. Details, details.
And then Pence says the real problem with the mob is that it disrupted a "substantive discussion" about election integrity, which apparently involves Republicans in Congress recycling the same baseless innuendo about voter fraud, something we've been treated to for months after anyway.
A truly substantive discussion of "election integrity" would grapple with the fact that Republicans at every level of government are trying to stop people from exercising the constitutional rights in order to entrench themselves in power.
Of course, the renewed purpose of The Big Lie is to provide justification for that voter-suppression push, so it ain't going away. Republicans cannot afford to let it die, because they do not believe they can win elections if more people are allowed to participate.
They've been saying this openly for a while now. Naturally, Pence's argument in the op-ed was winding up to a fact-free attack on H.R. 1. If you needed another reason the bill must pass, it's that the Sunk Cost King is lying wildly about it in the hopes he can be president four years from now. To paraphrase what his spouse reportedly told him on Election Night in 2016, I hope it was worth it, Mike.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a357112...nl23027898
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