The Really Quiet Part

Trump, having already declared that he was looking for Pence to overturn the election, is still trying not to repeat that mask-slip moment while also trying to attack Pence. So this is the result. pic.twitter.com/WhG7tkGCGp

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 5, 2022

Which means Trump is babbling. Part of the explanation may be this:

NR piece captures what I’ve heard from several Republicans today: many in the party and certainly attached to the RNC really like Mike Pence, who was threatened with being hanged that day, and yesterday may be a tipping point https://t.co/A19Rted4rO

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 6, 2022

Or it could be this:

It’s hard to keep arguing that you know why Pence really had the power to do what you claim while also showing you don’t understand the rules at all https://t.co/xNmX36P95D

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 5, 2022

I don’t think he deserves the benefit of any doubt. Which means his babble is just: babble. He does want to blame McConnell, but that’s more because McConnell is in power and Pence is not. It doesn’t matter what the rules are, either. Trump is speaking to his supporters. To them “the rules” are the reason they’ve been cheated of power.

But Trump is all over the map, and that isn’t going to win him more support or keep people interested in his claims he was cheated. That narrative has a shelf life, and it’s about to expire. Which is why Trump is trying to shift blame to officeholders like McConnell. He still wants to “drain the swamp,” or at least use that idea to win re-election.  The problem is, that argument feeds into the “the system is hopelessly corrupt” argument; and if that’s true, what’s the point of participating? Which leads to the question: “what’s the point of voting for Trump?

As for the argument that revising the ECA proves Trump was right, the absurdity of that is in this statement. The purpose of the revision is to prevent this abuse of power again. It’s aimed at the representatives and Senators as much as at the Vice President.

But the simple response is that Trump is babbling again. He doesn’t know what to say so he just keeps making noises, hoping something he does will hit the wall and stick.

The sad part is when the babble goes mainstream. Not directly, but indirectly. Pence’s former COS was on “Press The Meat” Sunday morning, saying absolutely nothing remarkable, but saying the other quiet part out loud. When pressed, he admitted there was no massive voter fraud in 2020, but still things were not “done right.”

What he meant was the adaptations made for Covid: 24 hour voting in Harris County, or drive-thru voting, or extended hours and extra time to vote. What was wrong with this? Well, “technicalities” when it means a criminal isn’t punished to general satisfaction. That’s how we describe the details of the law. But in this case, it means the regular functioning of government to respond expeditiously to circumstances. That’s what the COS was complaining about. There are legally ignorant arguments behind these complaints, as well founded as the idea you can’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. (It’s actually protected speech.) But the real problem being identified is simple: too many people voted. The whole point of the GOP concern with voting is not fraud (the COS admitted there wasn’t any, remember?), but with too many voters getting to vote. That’s what he objected to: governments working to allow people to vote despite extraordinary circumstances.

Rather predictably, that’s not getting a lot of attention:

“From my front row seat, I did not see a lot of legitimate political discourse,” Pence chief of staff Marc Short says on Meet the Press. He also says Trump got “a lot of bad advice” before Jan 6 and that he and Pence do have “concerns” about 2020 election.

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) February 6, 2022

“Concerns” is so much more anodyne than “We’re afraid of the majority of the electorate.”

The GOP can’t have them all voting, can they? They can’t say that, either. But even when they do, who listens?