@RonColeman, primarily the issue I have with Pence is that after December 14 vote of the electoral college, Pence got on stage multiple times and elevated expectations specifically for what could happen on 1/6. Up to the Monday before in GA.
Then after a report saying Pence told Trump he couldn’t do anything at lunch on 1/5, Trump released a statement contradicting the report and again raising expectations and stating he and Pence were on the same page.
1/ The reality is that when Boehner and McConnell joined the Democrats in 2010, to thwart the impact of the tea party, they broke trust with the base.
2/ Then in 2014, after the base rallied to two consecutive establishment Presidential candidates that threw the elections to Obama, we still turned out to hand Ryan the House and Mitch the Senate and they again betrayed us by immediately capitulating to DACA.
3/ In 2016 the base no longer viewed the Republican establishment as representing their interests. Every admonition to reject Trump was ignored because we no longer trusted our political leaders.
At the end I will ask this question: Given the current election laws and the changes implemented in 2020, how could you differentiate the two after the fact?
2/ Scenario 1
A completely above board election conducted during a pandemic where everyone involved’s primary objective was to produce an accurate result.
In person voting was handled properly. Mail in voting was done 100% by the books.
3/ Miraculously voters took their responsibilities seriously and filled out the envelopes immaculately leading to a reduction in the rejection rate from 6% to .1%.
After stripping the ballot from the envelopes they were run through the machines and results were tabulated.
1/ Democrats were allowed free reign to rally their base and the general public to the deranged idea that Trump was a pawn of Vladimir Putin and even when Mueller said there was no evidence of collusion they kept going with zero penalty.
2/ Just consider the analogous situation where we claimed there was fraud in Philadelphia and the system assigned a special counsel with an unlimited budget and unlimited investigative powers and after two years produced a report saying no evidence of fraud but we kept going.
3/ Let’s be clear, Trump never “proved” fraud. But Trump had no power to investigate. Giuliani never had subpoena power. He could never execute a warrant. Philadelphia was never asked by a court to produce evidence. So “proving” fraud was systemically impossible.