In today’s news - Part 3

Jen's my hero

"We're about the facts here." Too bad so much of the country is about beliefs instead.

I told my husband that I'm waiting for him to yell, April Fool's!!

I thought Nancy Pelosi didn’t have the authority to call for security? I thought former said no snd he had the say on it. I’m so tired of his lies and was hoping we would not keep hearing them at this point.

I’m hoping the truth comes out snd people pay the price for their sins. It has taken much longer than I hoped.

There's a great opinion here on how this is the time for Pence to stand up to Trump.  I'm not holding my breath.  Regrettably, aside from Liz Cheney and Kinzinger, none of the Republicans have the courage or integrity to stand up to him.  The amount of money Cheney has raised should be a lesson to all of them - you can criticize Trump and still rake in the campaign contributions.  DeSantis is starting to make noises, but he's worse.  He's Trump 2.0.  More polished, smarter, more politically savvy, ambitious and possibly even further to the right.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/31/mike-pence-this-is-your-moment-rebuke-donald-trump/

Opinion: Mike Pence, this is your moment to rebuke Donald Trump

Yesterday at 1:58 p.m. EST

By Henry Olsen

Former president Donald Trump went beyond the pale — even for him — when he said this weekend that he might pardon the Jan. 6 rioters if reelected and reiterated his belief that as vice president, Mike Pence had the power to “overturn the election.” Pence has eschewed criticizing his former boss since leaving office. He should reconsider as he prepares his remarks for this week’s Republican National Committee meeting.
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Trump’s insistence that he won the 2020 election remains a serious problem for Republicans nationwide. While most party leaders have ignored his insistent claims, candidates for office cannot. There’s no avoiding taking a stance on whether they agree with Trump on the campaign trail. Too many have openly supported his democracy-defeating lies, whether out of misguided conviction or fear that Trump will oppose them if they don’t. That means the GOP could be saddled with a large number of 2020 “truthers” in the midterms.
Sooner or later, someone with stature has to take the lie head on. The longer party leaders wait, the more potential officeholders will have to defend the indefensible. The emperor has no clothes, but it takes someone with the courage to say it out loud to break the spell.

Pence is the perfect person to do this, and his scheduled talk this week at the RNC’s winter meeting is the perfect place to pick up the gauntlet Trump has thrown down. Ultra-Trumpists may now despise Pence, but the vast majority of Republicans and GOP officeholders respect him. His courage while under immense pressure from Trump last year was laudatory, and his courage during and after the riot was immeasurable. As the person under direct attack from Trump, he is also the natural person to rebut Trump’s false claims.

He could start by explaining why he did not have the power to unilaterally disregard the will of electors from swing states. That would entail both a legal parsing of his constitutional and legal responsibilities and a clear defense of the rule of law. All of those states submitted slates of delegates according to state law, and no official alternative was submitted by a duly empowered state body. Thus, there was no dispute for Congress to resolve, the poorly written Electoral Count Act of 1887 notwithstanding.

More importantly, he could start breaking down the lie that the 2020 election was perverted by massive voter fraud. He could state clearly and forthrightly that he — and by extension, Trump — lost.

Pence doesn’t have to say everything was perfectly kosher. It wasn’t; partisan Democratic election officials in Wisconsin, for example, reportedly issued pandemic-related guidance to local election officials that ran afoul of state law. But, as an exhaustive review of the election in Wisconsin shows, none of those efforts made a difference. The Trump-Pence ticket lost despite inspiring millions of new voters to turn out because it lost ground in educated suburbs nationwide. Pence could make that case in detail and call Trump’s evidence-free bluff.
Pence would take a great risk to his own aspirations should he engage with Trump, but he continues to take a risk by not engaging. He cannot avoid making a clear statement on 2020’s legitimacy if he decides to run for president himself. Nor could he avoid the risk of alienating Trump’s acolytes with that statement. Better, then, to move first when he has the time to make his case. This also would give him the aura of bold action, a presidential prerequisite but not exactly a characteristic that normally applies to the cautious Hoosier.
Jennifer Rubin: The question for the GOP: Trump or American democracy?
Pence is a devout Christian, and he is surely intimately familiar with Jesus’ prayers in the garden of Gethsemane. Before he was arrested and tried, Jesus went to the garden knowing his fate. He prayed that his father would take the cup of death from him but also that if he could not be spared, that God’s will be done. The cup would not pass. Jesus’ crucifixion — and, for believers, his resurrection and the world’s redemption — is what followed.

It is blasphemous to equate Pence with Christ, but it is not blasphemous to note that sometimes one must courageously accept one’s fate. Pence has two choices in his life: Shrink into private life entirely or someday meet his fate as the man with the conviction and stature needed to engage with Trump in this battle. That political and personal cup will not pass, no matter how fervently he might pray that it does.
Trump’s statements are a direct challenge to Pence. We already know that Trump thinks Pence was a coward on Jan. 6. What better rebuke than to show courage when it is least expected and take the battle home to the bully.