Vivek Ramaswamy’s January 6 Charade

By Rich Lowry

Monday, August 28, 2023

 

Vivek Ramaswamy thinks Mike Pence failed.

 

Of course he does. He has to.

 

The former vice president is a MAGA villain for doing his constitutional duty on January 6, so Ramaswamy has to find a way to wiggle out of endorsing his conduct on that day, no matter how convoluted or inane.

 

On Meet the Press yesterday, he went with his alternative-reality critique of Pence that he test-drove with our own John McCormack after last week’s Republican debate.

 

According to Ramaswamy, Pence missed “a historic opportunity.” He could have forged “a national compromise” by leading the way on an election-reform package of single-day voting on Election Day (which would become a federal holiday), paper ballots, and government-issued ID.

 

And that’s what Ramaswamy would have done, forging “national consensus” whereas Pence missed his chance to “reunite” the country.

 

The only parties to whom Ramaswamy’s posited grand bargain would have been unsatisfactory were a) the United States Congress and b) President Donald Trump.

 

If we indulge this little make-believe, what Ramaswamy outlines would have been a massive federal overhaul of the election system, the kind of change it takes years to build a consensus around.

 

One way or the other, it would have involved overturning the voting rules in most states in the union. It’s not clear why, say, Republicans in Georgia or Florida would have supported a federal rewrite of their systems, but, of course, Democrats would have been wholly opposed.

 

What would Ramaswamy’s bargaining chip have been to get them to accept this deal? He would have presumably threatened not to do his constitutional duty. On a matter that no one before had thought was optional. This would have been considered an act of extralegal blackmail that would have encountered strenuous bipartisan denunciation and opposition.

 

But let’s extend the fantasy further and say that Ramaswamy combined the legislative skills of Lyndon Johnson and Henry Clay and got this package through Congress in a matter of weeks, days, or even hours.

 

You know who would have been outraged by it? The incumbent president Ramaswamy was serving. Trump didn’t want a package of election reforms; he wanted the result of the 2020 election blocked or overturned, and he wanted his vice president to use the leverage of January 6 to do it.

 

In this scenario, Vivek Ramaswamy would have been as dastardly a traitor as Mike Pence, and subject to the same pressure campaign from on high.

 

If Ramaswamy had his current posture toward Trump, he might have agreed with the president and his most fervent supporters, “Yes, sir, I probably do deserve to be hanged.”

 

There would have been no middle way, no glib evasions.

 

In short, Ramaswamy’s counterfactual history is preposterous at every level. But it gives him something to say to keep his distance from Mike Pence, in another piece of insincere salesmanship at which he has repeatedly excelled. In the debate Chris Christie, noting how Ramaswamy stole a line from Barack Obama, said he feared we are dealing with the same type of “amateur.” To the contrary, all the evidence suggests we are dealing with an accomplished professional.