Mike Pence is running around the country speaking to donors who have lots of zeros in their bank accounts. It’s his futile attempt to get the party to forget about his role in the 2020 election so he can consider running for president in 2024.

Speaking to donors at a March 4 New Orleans fundraiser, Pence said:

Elections are about the future. My fellow Republicans, we can only win if we are united around an optimistic vision for the future based on our highest values. We cannot win by fighting yesterday’s battles, or by relitigating the past.

Since Pence’s comments were also directed at me (the “my fellow Republicans” part), let me unequivocally state that Mike Pence has as much chance of winning the Republican nomination as he does the Super Lotto.

While Pence holds court with folks who write big checks, it’s MAGAs that do all the heavy lifting during campaigns: making phone calls, writing postcards, sending email messages, knocking on doors, distributing lawn signs, posting flyers, holding rallies, registering voters, ballot harvesting (where allowed), driving people to polls, to name some of the many grassroots tasks that must be done for a candidate to win an election.

MAGAs have not forgotten, and many will never forgive, that Mike Pence refused to send back the votes from the few states where there were multiple reports of vote and voter fraud.

Pence’s response is that he was just following the law. Elitist Republicans like Pence, so out of touch with the party’s base, claim that vice presidents play only a ceremonial role in counting the Electoral College votes per The Electoral Count Act of 1887. The Act details how Congress is meant to certify the election of a U.S. president. From The Examiner:

The law was passed after the disputed 1876 election in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Democrat Samuel J. Tilden by a single Electoral College vote and backroom deal. That year, three states, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, sent competing slates of electors to Congress, both major parties claiming to have won those states.

Close and contentious elections followed in 1880 and 1884, and Congress decided it needed to do something to formally establish procedures and keep the transfer of power orderly.

(Of course, if the vice president’s role is solely ceremonial, as Democrats insisted following the January 6 melee, why are some Democrats now eager to revise the law?)

In fact, there are several ways to interpret the Electoral Count Act. The 19th-century Act is vague in many respects but it is clear that the vice president cannot overturn the result of a presidential election.

Image: Mike Pence (edited). YouTube screen grab.

However, the Pences of this world ignore is that we MAGAs never wanted the election overturned. In January 2021, we just wanted recertification in the few states where testimonials and videos had indicated something deceitful occurred between late Tuesday evening, November 3, and early Wednesday morning, November 4.

Mike Pence fails to understand that reviewing improper ballot-counting before certifying election results is not overturning an election.

Establishment GOPers recite the same talking points as Democrats, claiming that if Pence had sent back some votes for recertification, it would have sparked a Constitutional Crisis. Not true!

There was no Constitutional crisis in 2000. That year, the American people voted on November 7 but did not have a presidential winner declared for more than one month as it wound its way through the courts. Moreover, the 2000 presidential election wasn’t decided by recounting votes, although Democrats sure tried. (How fast can you say, “hanging chads?”) The 2000 presidential election was determined on December 12 in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.

There was no Constitutional crisis in 2000; there wouldn’t have been one in 2020.

By Pence ignoring his role in the Electoral College certification process, the United States and the world are mired in a cyclone of devastation because of Joe Biden’s weak “leadership.” Here are some top-of-the-fold events that many MAGAs believe Mike Pence has partial responsibility for:

• Russia invasion of Ukraine. Polls show that the American people do not believe this would have happened if Donald Trump was in the White House.
• Lack of a cohesive pandemic response. Following the politics rather than the science.
• Rampant 40-year high inflation that Americans are experiencing daily in grocery stores and at gas pumps. And inflation is going to get worse.
• Disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021 that killed 13 service members (whom Biden didn’t have time to mention by name in his State of the Union speech).
• Reports of Americans still waiting to be rescued from Afghanistan.
• Making America energy-dependent again. The United States was energy independent when Donald Trump left office.
• A wide-open southern border that allows illegal aliens who are not vetted to waltz into our country—2 million-plus so far. (Terrorists? Thieves? Spies? Sick?)
• A wide-open southern border that allows the synthetic drug fentanyl, which is more powerful than morphine, to easily come into our country.
• A military that focuses more on transgender than transnational issues.
• Booming homeless tent cities that are given priority over middle-class neighborhoods they destroy.
• Record-breaking crime waves in cities throughout the United States.

Oh, but Joey got 81 million votes after campaigning from his Delaware basement!

The “America First” MAGA base is overwhelmingly with President Donald Trump. Most MAGAs remain unforgiving that Mike Pence did not even try to question suspect issues surrounding the certification process!

Pence’s failure to send back votes for recertification in those few states where votes dramatically changed in the late hours of November 3 and early hours of November 4 is why Pence has no chance of ever being the Republican Party’s candidate, much less elected president. But if it makes him happy, Pence can continue traveling around the country giving speeches to the GOP’s big donors.

You can reach Robin Itzler at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com.