You need to go back and listen to Pence’s statements as the host of an eponymous conservative radio show host on WRCR-FM in Rushville, IN. He was affirmably and almost virulently anti-government even by conservative standards and made statements to the effect that the Bible was his constitution. That Pence wavered, even for a minute, on his legally-defined duty as President of the US Senate to deliver and certify the Electoral Colleges votes tells you everything about just how high he holds democratic norms compared to ‘loyalty’, and speaks to the kind of decision he would make when it came to adherence to Constitutional duties versus his fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian Bible. His later refusal to testify before Congress on the events of 6 January 2021, while perhaps done out of some sense of self-preservation, also speak to how pliable any moral foundation he has is.
Pence, in his own bland way, did just as much to erode democratic norms by not forcefully speaking out and acting in accordance with his duties, and his recent and reluctant refusal to back Trump is hardly any kind of counter to that. Suggesting that Pence is or would be “terrible within normal parameters” shows just how far normality has shifted, not what a basically incorruptible or selfless president Mike Pence would be in the face of an electoral loss. This is basically a replay of how much better Ben Carson would have been as President, with people asserting that he was a “nice man”, carried “how little baggage Carson carries”, and was “wrong within normal parameters” instead of doing the basic research to see that he was a corrupt toady with crazy notions about his Christian beliefs even by Seventh Day Adventist standards.
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