USA TODAY International Edition
Impeach Trump, get Pence? It’s too late
His religious right views are shaping US policies
The arguments against beginning the impeachment of President Donald Trump keep getting worse.
The latest from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi posits something like: We can’t impeach because some people think that means removal from office — and if we impeach they’ll quickly figure out that’s not true. It’s like arguing we shouldn’t take a cruise to Zanzibar because flat-earthers think we’ll fall off the planet.
But one argument does resonate for many on the left, especially those who appreciate the advances in rights for LGBTQ people under President Barack Obama. It goes like this: If we got President Mike Pence, we’d be begging to have Trump back, as former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman insisted.
This could be the worst argument against holding the president accountable for his many high crimes and misdemeanors. It ignores the reality that when it comes to what matters to the religious right, we already have President Pence. The danger is now we have President Pence plus Trump's criminality, obstruction and aspiring authoritarianism on top of the extraordinary costs and shame of subsidizing Trump’s businesses and family.
Pence’s domination of our domestic policies became even more obvious last week when the administration escalated its assault on science. The Department of Health and Human Services imposed new restrictions on the use of fetal tissue from abortions for research — research that has led to vaccines for rubella and rabies and that scientists say is still needed to develop other lifesaving treatments.
HHS also canceled a contract to find new treatments for HIV. This fits with Pence’s record of ideological decisions that contribute to an increase in HIV risks. As Indiana governor, his opposition to Planned Parenthood and needle exchanges helped lead to the worst HIV outbreak in the state’s history.
While Trump has used a few token gestures to position himself as a nontraditional Republican on gay rights, Charlotte Clymer, a “queer army vet,” has masterfully documented the administration’s sweeping and systematic attack on LGBT rights. These efforts range from deleting pages of LGBTQ rights from the White House website to banning transgender people from the military, the first resegregation of the armed forces in American history.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, look like they stepped out of the same factory that produced Pence. Both easily could have been among his top picks to sit on the Supreme Court and gut Roe v. Wade. Likewise, Trump’s capture of the federal judiciary is a longtime dream of Pence and the religious right.
Nowhere has President Pence been more effective than in how he has remade HHS in his image. Appointees continually favor right-wing faith and the ability to discriminate over science and measures that actually reduce abortion, such as birth control.
“There has never been anything like it,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, told Reuters about her working relationship with Pence. These policies, she said, “I believe can’t get done without Vice President Pence and his team.”
LGBTQ and reproductive rights activists would agree.
Pence has made a deal with the devil and is living out his dream agenda without any accountability. Sixty years of progress are evaporating while fat tax cuts for the rich and their corporations rack up deficits that Republicans will suddenly care about the moment they lose power. And the sitting vice president gets to hide in the eye of Trump’s never-ending tempest of abuse, whining and race baiting, without getting too much mud on his hands.
We have no idea if Pence would be as effective as Trump in implementing his policies. But we do know the difference would be in tone and not substance. President Pence is here; removing Trump would only make that clear.