The Shameful Pence Episode The Beltway Media Isn't Talking About

There's a dark, ugly chapter in Mike Pence's life that the Beltway media has helped him coverup. I bet Trump doesn't even know about it. Movement conservatives and Hoosiers know who he is but 86% of American voters pretty much never heard of Mike Pence, or at least haven't heard enough about him to have formed an opinion. Starting in 1994 he was a small town Indiana hate talk radio host who referred to himself as "Rush Limbaugh on decaf," which is how he gained visibility and how in 2000, he won a congressional seat after two previous tries. By 2006, the ambitious ideologue was running for Minority Leader. John Boehner beat him 168-27, although two years later his colleagues elected him Republican Conference Chairman, the token Tea Party nut in the House leadership.

In the House he was best known for his desire to go to war against Iran and for his bizarre life-long obsession with homophobia and his anti-Choice fanaticism. He led the fight to turn then-routine appropriation bills into vehicles for his extremist and divisive positions. Almost 7 years ago to the day he led an effort in the House to turn the debate over appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education into a fundamentalist jihad against Planned Parenthood. He was always crowing how he got 19 Democrats, almost exclusively Blue Dogs, to cross the aisle and join the Republican War Against Women. Subsequently 16 of those 19 Democrats were defeated or forced to retire, the only ones left being garbage fake Dems Dan Lipinski (IL) and Collin Peterson (MN) in the House and right-wing nut Joe Donnelly in the Senate.

But the most sordid episode in Pence's ugly political career was when he ratted out Boehner-- his leader and rival-- for sleeping with Beltway lobbyist Lisbeth Lyons, a kind of revenge for Boehner forcing Pence ally Mark Souter (R-IN) to resign after he was exposed for having illicit sex with a staffer. At the time, to have Mike Pence surreptitiously leak the news to the media about Boehner running around with a female lobbyist wasn't remarkable because of the sex and hypocrisy, it was remarkable because of the motivation inside the GOP caucus to keep Boehner from ever becoming Speaker. At the time Pence was freaking out about being caught ratting out Boehner-- and move that ultimately failed to dislodge Boehner, making Pence's position (and ambition) untenable and causing him to abruptly change his career path as he careened from one idea to another togged him out of the House. The week before the 2010 election, I wrote that "Last night Mike Pence, who wants to run for president, had his flack call me-- and late at night-- to demand I retract my assertion that it was Pence who leaked the story about Boehner and the lady lobbyist. The flack said it isn't true. I asked him how he knows. He said he was '100% certain.' I said that that was impossible and that my informant was 100% certain it was true and that it was a firsthand account. He demanded to know who my informant was. I asked him to put Pence on the phone. He refused and said he would send me a written statement; he didn't." Boehner became Speaker and Pence's House career was over.

Mr. Trumpy-the-Clown might want to watch his back-- and check in with his running mate vetting team pronto. The fact that Pence is a known rat and has always been a fierce advocate for the exact trade bills Trump has built a campaign around opposing is kind of curious... but for all his whining about how hard it is to build bathrooms in skyscrapers, Trump has never been a details man.