This is so funny, made the more so by the fact that Mike Pence is playing it straight, talking in measured tones and with the utmost solemnity that the Vanilla Spock Hoosier can possibly muster. I must say, this comparison didn’t immediately leap to mind when I heard his “siren song of populism” last night but when Nick Catoggio, writing in his Boiling Frogs newsletter, equated Pence to Dracula’s uber sycophantic sidekick, Renfield, the comparison resonated. And what’s more comical still, psychological analyses of the characters in Dracula have long depicted Renfield as the victim in a toxic relationship and Dracula as the abuser, until finally Renfield gets the courage to leave. Isn’t it sounding more and more like 45 and his VP by the minute?
Mike Pence complaining about populism is like Renfield complaining about vampirism.
I don’t mean that entirely as an insult. Remember that Renfield, like Pence, redeemed himself in the end by betraying his evil master.
Both ended up dead because of those betrayals, although in Renfield’s case death was literal while in Pence’s it was merely political. The former VP is thankfully alive and well—barely.
The analogy occurred to me as I read about his speech in New Hampshire yesterday describing a Republican “time for choosing.” Pence surely used that phrase deliberately, knowing how it would resonate with his intended audience of traditional conservatives. “A Time for Choosing” was the title of Ronald Reagan’s famous 1964 speech framing the ideological stakes for America as a choice between oppressive collectivism on the one hand and individual liberty on the other. It made him a national figure and charted the political course of the conservative revolution domestically and abroad.
Now where this gets risible is that Pence sonorously intoned that “the Republican party didn’t begin on a golden escalator in 2015.” No, that was not the beginning of the party, but it sure was the beginning of the end of it. And who was only too happy to jump on that golden escalator with the GOP golden boy to revive his own perished political career? A certain governor from Indiana, as I recall, was only too happy to offer his neck to the Count From Queens, to sink his fangs into and bring him over to the other side and make him a MAGApire, too.
But now Pence has seen the light. He realizes he embraced evil and so he invokes his misty, watercolored memories of the way things were in the GOP, prior to Trump. Does he not know that the toothpaste never goes back in the tube, the genie never returns to the bottle? And the only way to undo a vampire is to pound a stake through its heart? It’s a little late for regret.
Now here’s an even more apt comparison than Pence to Dracula’s sidekick. Pence isn’t Renfield, no he’s really Ray Stanz. Stanz is one of the ghostbusters and here’s the scene where he thinks of the most innocuous thing from his childhood. Listen close, because Mango Mussolini’s audio is embedded with Marshmallow Man’s video. This is the monster Mike Pence and the rest of the GOP gave all to unleash on us. Trump is the GOP’s Destructor.
And here’s where Pence’s participation goes from comedy to farce.
There’s a compelling case to be made that no single person did more to choose the form of conservatism’s destructor than him. McKay Coppins laid it out in a piece for The Atlantic in March, zeroing in on the great irony of Pence’s 2024 campaign. By reassuring wary social conservatives that a louche sociopath from Manhattan was morally fit for office in 2016, Pence rendered his own brand of evangelical rectitude politically irrelevant. “In effect,” Coppins wrote, “he spent four years convincing conservative Christian voters that the very thing he had to offer them didn’t matter.”
That argument could conceivably be extended to the entire conservative project. Pence smiled and nodded as Trump slapped tariffs on American allies, gladhanded Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, flirted with pulling out of NATO, defended the status quo on entitlement spending, ran enormous deficits (even before COVID!), and day by day inculcated an ethic of authoritarianism on the right that almost led to Pence himself being hanged at the Capitol for refusing to midwife an autogolpe.
I will give it up to Pence that he finally saw the light and is trying to walk a different way now, but the old phrase “too little too late” comes to mind. Pence isn’t an idiot. He knew what Trump was about and he whitewashed it and cosigned on all of it up until the point when he himself was asked to participate in criminal behavior and there he drew the line. And for this drawing of the line, he’s been cited for “heroism” including in the column here by Nick Catoggio. Self preservation maybe? A chance to avoid the mug shot with the others in Atlanta.
No, I appreciate the fact that Pence chose to abide by the law and execute his duties as prescribed by the Constitution but I do not view that as “heroic” — although, granted, somebody who does the right thing when everybody else around him is breaking the law right and left is noteworthy to an extent. But the indelible and inalterable fact still remains that Pence was an enabler up until the minute he wasn’t. Pence put himself in the position where he eventually got to. And he put the nation there along with him.
And maybe he wants to atone. Maybe that’s what all this is about. Pence is polling at 2%. He probably would be more successful running a popsicle stand in Hell right now than running for president. If something happens to Trump, as Ron DeSantis prays for nightly, it will be a death match between DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, as incredible as that sounds. But nothing is incredible in an era where the GOP frontrunner has four criminal trials and one civil suit moving apace and that is not only not a handicap, that is the very definition of his race.
Trump’s trials are his campaign. This is all a performance for MAGA and a grifting machine to line Trump’s pockets as his comrades go broke and fall on the field all around him — which may induce a number of them to flip.
The SS GOP sank seven years ago and it’s going to take one hell of a lot more than Mike Pence invoking the shade of the 60’s iteration of Ronnie Raygun to bring that wrecked hulk off the ocean floor and get it back in service again.
I have to end with this photo because this says it all about how much Trump simply did not belong where he and his enablers recklessly and inexorably put him, forever changing the course of American history and endangering our way of life. The expression on Trump’s face is insecure and moody. He knows he’s insanely in over his head and wondering WTF to do about it, how to pull it off. And Obama looks for all the world like he’s wondering if he’s dreaming all this. I don’t believe I ever saw this expression on Obama’s face before or after. I imagine his thoughts to be, “I’m going to do everything I can to help this idiot but my God, I fear whatever TF is about to happen, as stupid and unprepared for this as he is.”
At least those are my thoughts and my projection. This photo will end up in the history books, I believe, because it captures the zeitgeist of this time. 2016, the year America stepped Through the Looking Glass, 2020 the year America dodged the bullet but still stayed in the Twilight Zone and I don’t know how 2024 will be characterized. But it won’t be the year America and the GOP snapped back to a pre-Trump world, like a rubber band. I can’t foresee the world post November 5, 2024, but that much I can guarantee.
In the words of Tanya Tucker… “It’s a little too late to do the right thing now”. That’s a fact Mikey.
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like GOPers abandoned Reagan worship long ago. In fact, a large segment of the GOP (thanks to the rise of the Tea Party – now Freedom Caucus) has a rather dismissive, if not downright contemptuous view of “St.” Ronald, the Reagan. So not only is Pence saying/doing too little & too late, he’s trying to use a political symbol that his target audience doesn’t find worth looking at.
It is positively profane to use Spock’s name in connection with Pence’s. Spock=logic, knowledge and Pence=idiocy, anti-knowledge.
The commonality is the (real or apparent) rejection of emotion.
Spock shows us what life can be like if one actually lives without emotion.
Pence shows us how crippled rationally an actual human with emotions can be if he (or she) doesnt come to terms with them.
Invoking ray gun’s name is like a minor demon invoking the Devil. Reagan who oversaw trading arms and cocaine to run an illegal operation in Central America, with death squads raping and killing peasants, while locking up pot smokers at home is phucking beautiful. Another criminal president who NEVER PAID FOR HIS CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. And how did he get off? Acting. Acting like he was at the meetings but, doggoneit, he just didn’t remember all that stuff. Oh, and we won’t get into how he destroyed public education setting the table for a nation of cretins to think they are patriots when, IN FACT, they are traitors. Let’s also mention the deal cut with the Iranians to keep the hostages to undercut Carter. HE WAS AN EVIL SOB. MAY HE ROT IN HELL. B-E-A-UTIFUL!!!!
Well to start with. The Freedom Caucus ain’t got nothing to do with the Tea Party. The Tea Party at least had an agenda however sick and demented it was. The Freedom Caucus has keep Trump out of jail and put him back in office. Beyond that they have nothing concrete or civilized to offer unless it would be concrete over shoes for some members of Congress. Now where’s Spock’s ears. First time I seen this clown I was like, which America was he born in. Got to be some alternative reality time warp thing. I am a native of Illinois that only recently moved to a different state and I sure as hell don’t remember this clown as mayor or anything else like say Governor.
Now putting that aside, we have to obviously delve into what mother was thinking to let her man associate with the likes of Trump. You can throw all the crap out there that you want but women have a different way of getting their news and I guarantee she knew about every last transgression the mango Mussolini stuck his hands in. Like when you come home thinking you got away with some shit at school and mom is waiting at the old kitchen door with a switch. And really Trump put a hit on the moron that day. When the call went out that they lost him, Trump didn’t send more secret service down there to look for him. No, he started working on a speech saying how much he would be missed. And I God dammed guarantee that if someone tried to get me hanged lied that I would have walked into the Oval Office and went with the platitudes and all that until I got close to him and then you would have had to get about four or five agents to get me off the clown.
No, if I was Mike Pence I would withdraw from the race. Cite something in the family or something. He could run for the senate or he could just get into something with speaking and wait for 2028 to roll around. He would have a good shot at that.
But you are right. That picture beats hell out of the mugshot. You got Trump sitting there and you can tell he’s thinking, what in the hell did I do! And on the other side you got Obama sitting there thinking what in the fucking hell did America do? Are they insane? This man will destroy America. You know something. Obama was right. Trump has destroyed America. Oh we are still here. We still have everything we did before. The problem is we also have a depth of hate that not even the civil war could compare with. We have families that have been ripped apart. We grandparents living in separate houses. People have friends that won’t even acknowledge they exist. All because of one man. Even Jim Jones didn’t have this kind of power. It’s scary to say the least. And it’s sad. Everyone is sitting back waiting and watching to see the next move. What will Trump do when he finds out about this piece of evidence or that this person has said something they shouldn’t. In the other article you had Vic whatever that wouldn’t give a straight answer. This whole thing had bearing on that. My biggest fear now is that when do people start falling off their balconies or tripping and falling in front of a truck. Trump knows he’s going to jail unless some miracle happens. And a pardon, look what happened to Gerald Ford. Nixon really didn’t do that much himself, he just mainly knew about it and didn’t say anything. But his pardon turned Ford into a one term President. But that was a whole different world back then. In this world Trump has been a criminal since then. Sure you have the statue of limitations and all that crap so he never will serve time for a whole list of crimes. But screw it. He belongs in jail and it’s past time someone put him there. And no I’m not saying that because I don’t think Biden could beat him again. That’s irrelevant to this. Trump is a life long criminal.
Now you want to bitch about something. Well here’s a question. What about all the people that died because of his trying to hide the Covid outbreak and then the PPE auction that Jared ran out of the White House. And you have Trump never giving the order so companies could change their businesses over to things like respirators that Doctors needed often having two or three patients hooked up to one respirator. People dying and their loved ones having to watch it on a closed circuit television instead of by their bedside. Now Trump didn’t cause Covid but he sure as hell didn’t help either. What he did with his position and what Jared did under him by running a auction on those very same respirators could and should be called criminal negligence resulting in mass deaths. And by the way, what happened to the money that Jared made. It just disappeared the last I heard. So what are you whining little aholes going to cry about their. How many deaths is to many. Ten, twenty, one hundred thousand. I’m just asking, informed people want to know these things.
that pic looks to me like Trump is on the verge of a smirk. He has no self-awareness, no possibility that he doubts himself.