The role of the Vice-President is largely a ceremonial one … showing the flag in countries not important enough to rate a Presidential visit, presiding over the Senate and waiting for the President to die. John Nance Garner (Cactus Jack), America’s 32nd Vice-President (1934-1941) probably had it about right when he famously summed up the office as not being worth “A bucket of warm piss”.
All that changed yesterday. Mike Pence had been one of Trump’s most loyal supporters standing with him through thick and thin. Yesterday Pence stood tall and defied an out-of-control President making good his pledge when he took office to ” …. support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic …”. By refusing to do what the President demanded of him (declining to sign-off on the votes of the Electoral College) he averted a full-blown constitutional crisis which would have seen the United States descend into political anarchy.
Pence has written himself into the history books as the Vice-President who put duty above friendship and loyalty and, in doing so, preserved the democratic ideal.
His boss remains hunkered down in the White House which now resembles Hitler’s bunker in the last days with his Transportation Secretary resigning and with Senators Graham and Cruz, two of his most prominent supporters now distancing themselves from him over the tragic events of yesterday. The calls for Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment are noise and will remain just that … it won’t happen, doesn’t need to. Trump is now a broken President in name only reduced, like Hitler, to issuing commands which no-one will take the slightest notice of. He is yesterday’s man determined to take the Republican Party down with him.
And the sad thing for America (and all democratic countries) is that democracy depends on a functioning opposition to provide a check on executive power.
No Minister 
Vet, you seem to forget the country descended into anarchy many months ago when all those Democrat Congressmen, Governors and Mayors encouraged their BLM and Antifa storm troopers to riot, burn, loot and murder for weeks on end, only to hear themselves described by gutter media as ‘mostly peaceful.’. (Who could forget the execrable Maxine Waters?) Today’s events are but a natural progression.
Be that as it may, President Trump should have kept his mouth shut.
What “democratic ideal”?
The USA has just suffered a colour revolution architected by the same functionaries who have inflicted them upon multiple other nations.
Senile ol’ Joe Biden don’t care though, he gets to play Prez for a while and his utterly repulsive son will escape justice for being his bag man. Then it will be Kamala Harris’ turn, a woman as flaky as a sausage roll.
And you can join Hillary Clinton in gloating at Donald Trump’s humiliation at the hand of the deep state.
You’ve got what you wished for and often when that happens you live to regret it
Andrei … actually your opinions don’t matter a lot to me but you are free to express them on my blog. Don’t get your ‘colour’ fixation thing though. It suggests that you’re not only a fascist but a racist fascist to boot.
Biden may not be great and I think there were better alternatives on offer … and yes, he may not even see out his turn. But whatever, it is what it is, and America will live with it. I repeat again, if Trump had offered even a modicum of leadership over COVID he would now be gearing up for a second term. He didn’t and paid the price but his actions post the election have trashed his legacy and he will go down in history as a sore, sad loser who tried and failed to subvert the democratic process. Some legacy.
You don’t know what a “color revolution” is Vet?
I guess that is why you don’t recognize one when you see one.
The Neo Cons had free reign from the early 1990s until Donald Trump’s election when they had their wings clipped.
Now they are back in ascendancy
And if you think yesterday was bad look at this from four years ago when he was inaugerated
I don’t think it’s a useful term and sounds like a media concoction. Although “Coconut Revolution” in Papua New Guinea in 1988 did catch my eye 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution