VP Pence Advises Senate to Be Like That One Guy Who Was Bribed

Pence recently emerged from his cave to write an op ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he has a strange bit of advice for Democratic senators considering impeachment. He wants them to follow the path of Edmund Ross, a Republican senator who took a brave stand against his party to let a lawless racist keep destroying the country. In exchange for a lot of money and favors.

See, Ross only got his senate seat after a man named Perry Fuller bribed the Kansas legislature on his behalf. So when something as important and solemn as impeachment came up, he naturally sent Fuller to talk to the President about his vote. And lo and behold, after surviving impeachment on by one vote, Johson nominated Fuller to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue. And then after that failed, he gave Fuller the job running Revenue for the port of New Orleans. Within a several months, Fuller was arrested from stealing $3,000,000 (close to a hundred million in today’s money). Fortunately for Fuller, he had a US senator willing to guarantee his bond.

He also got another person a job running Indian Affairs in Oklahoma (pre-statehood) because there was a “large amount of patronage connected with that office“. He got his brother a federal mail job in Florida. He got a coal company federal land. He tried to get a couple of southern states back their full admittance to the Union. And it’s likely that some good old fashioned cash changed hands, but impossible to prove.

Fittingly, and contrary to the myth that his vote cost him his office, Ross lost his seat to a challenger who was willing to spend even more money bribing the Kansas legislature.

So that’s Ross. A guy who bribed his way into office, took bribes while in office to allow arguably the worst President in US history to continue making sure the South could keep fighting the Civil War for another three or four hundred years, and was eventually out bribed.

It’s kinda fitting that Pence thinks he’s a good role model.

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7 Comments

  1. Couldn’t read the article because I won’t pay/sign in for the WSJ.

    What does have my attention is the video at the top about Theodore Roosevelt. With very little substance, the main point of the 1 minute and 36 second video is that Theodore Roosevelt ignored the Constitution and just did whatever the fuck he wanted because the Constitution didn’t explicitly say he couldn’t. According to the video, this is something presidents should aspire to (therefore, Trump is correct)

    Which, like, is total bullshit. Theodore Roosevelt was an asshole in a lot of ways. His dealings with the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War, wherein he made a lot of private promises he couldn’t deliver on certainly parallels to today. Roosevelt offered up Korea and to an extent, China, to the “superior” Japanese race. There’s plenty of cartoons of Roosevelt being a total ass and thinking he could run the country single-handedly; he thought he could rule the world with benevolent imperialism.

    Of all the presidents on Mount Rushmore, we don’t view Roosevelt as critically as we should. That the Republicans want a claim to his legacy is factually incorrect and telling.

      • Are you familiar enough to know if that initial video is a part of Pence’s op-ed? Or is it some random content generator? Either way, most of these papers are very silly if they think they’re getting my millennial money.

        The Nobel Peace Prize is trash and has almost always been trash. Neither Roosevelt or Obama “deserved” their prizes but it fills me with a certain amount of joy that Trump wants one so badly, like a little toddler. But then I remember that he pressured Shinzo Abe to nominate him and I start seething again.

        But back to the original point of your post: I don’t know if Pence is obliquely trying to signal to Dems that those who break rank will be rewarded. Who is really left to persuade? They probably already have Joe Manchin. Doug Jones probably won’t win he re-election, regardless of how he votes on impeachment. Shouldn’t the Trump Admin spend their energy trying to court the GOP? Or are they trying to give the illusion of giving the Dems an out so that history won’t “frown” on them?

  2. Pence’s op ed is especially short-sighted given potential parallels between Johnson and 45:

    • He was known for “telling it as it is,” which garnered favor with “common folk.”

    • His sole motivation for his public support of emancipation (he convinced Lincoln to exempt Tennessee from the Emancipation Proclamation) was to punish the South, which had branded him a traitor when he refused to leave the U.S. Senate after Tennessee left the Union.

    • Upon becoming President after Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson promptly began efforts to undermine Lincoln’s legacy.

    • He handed out (thousands of) very unpopular pardons.

    • He blocked emancipation efforts and promoted racist policies such as the establishment of the “black codes,” which all but maintained slavery in the South.

    • After a series of legislative efforts meant to diminish his authority, Johnson went on a speaking tour intended to promote politicians who supported him but often degenerated into abusive rants excoriating his enemies.

  3. Ugh they need to just unplug him again.

    Pence is a snake and if he were to become president he’d be a dangerous fucking snake, but at least he wouldn’t have the cult of personality and media attention suck for us to challenge in this election year.

    I honestly predicted the Republicans to be like, “fine, impeach him, see if I care” and their base would come along. But I’m…heartened? I guess…by the fact that they keep fighting it? That they keep trying to sell it as morally or factually bankrupt (although they can’t really), rather than say “oh yeah so what?!” I mean, I’m sure eventually they’ll get to that (I think Hannity already has) but they have behaved a little differently this time.

    I’m “heartened” (that feels like the wrong word), not because I think there is a chance he’ll be convicted, but that I think the Republicans absolutely feel that this is an electoral liability for them when we’ve been hearing for 3 fucking years that it’ll cause them to sail to victory in 2020. Polling numbers aren’t reflecting that and they seem to be acknowledging it. I haven’t read Pence’s fuckery, but if he’s trying to convince a Democrat to take their side, it’s clearly that they feel like the partisanship of the moment isn’t benefiting them.

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