Mike Pence does not seem prepared to save the republic, should he be called upon to do so

This tension could spiral into various unpleasant scenarios of varying danger or risk to the country. One such scenario is that Trump’s refusal to accept absentee votes as legitimate leads him to declare himself the winner despite the determined outcome. This is one of any number of possible crises that could emerge, but it’s also one that Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out as a possibility.

“Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferral of power after the election?” a reporter asked Trump at a briefing late last month.

“Well,” Trump said, “we’re going to have to see what happens.”

He went on to complain about mail-in ballots, suggesting that the country should “get rid” of them.

The following day, a similar pattern. Trump was asked a similar question, and he declined to say that he would step down if he lost.

“We want to make sure the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t know that it can be with this whole situation, unsolicited ballots.”

His press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said the same thing: “The president will accept the results of a free and fair election” — but that mail-in voting purportedly puts that at risk.

Maybe this is just bluster, Trump goading his opponents and reveling in the reaction. Or perhaps it’s Trump laying the groundwork for battling a legitimate and even obvious loss to former vice president Joe Biden in an effort to retain his position.

Should that happen, Vice President Pence may be put in a position where he needs to decide between standing with his boss or standing with the will of the country. Asked about such a scenario at the vice-presidential debate on Wednesday, his response suggested that his loyalties would lie with the former.

“If Vice President Biden is declared the winner and President Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer power, what would be your role and responsibility as vice president?” moderator Susan Page asked. “What would you personally do? You have two minutes.”

Pence’s response came in three parts. The first was to assert his confidence that Trump would win, rattling off the familiar litany of accomplishments that’s often peppered throughout the president’s speeches.

Then he pivoted to a line of attack familiar to regular consumers of conservative media.

“When you talk about accepting the outcome of the election, I must tell you,” he said to his debate opponent, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) — “your party has spent the last three-and-a-half years trying to overturn the results of the last election.”

This, of course, is a reference to the investigation into Russian interference, a probe that began before the 2016 election was over. It is further a reference to the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which was initiated by Republican Department of Justice official appointed by Trump. It is then a reference to Trump’s impeachment, which stemmed from an anonymous whistleblower complaint about the president’s effort to leverage his power to aid his election and was bolstered by a slew of officials from within Trump’s own administration — including starring testimony from an ambassador appointed by Trump.

Pence framed this differently, as you might expect.

“I mean, there were documents released this week that the CIA actually made a referral to the FBI documenting that those allegations were coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign,” he claimed. This, too, is a staple of conservative media — but it is a highly dubious claim, which the vice president of the United States should understand.

“I think we’re going to win this election,” Pence continued in response to the moderator’s question. Why? Well, let him explain.

“President Trump and I are fighting every day in courthouses to prevent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from changing the rules and creating this universal mail-in voting that will create a massive opportunity for voter fraud,” Pence said. “If we have a free and fair election, we know we’re going to have confidence in it, and I believe in all my heart that President Donald Trump is going to be reelected for four more years.”

In other words, Pence holds to the party line, which is not reassuring.

Again, there is no “massive opportunity for fraud” that’s created, given the safeguards that are in place. The bigger risk is clearly that more mail ballots will be rejected on review in an effort to stamp out even attempted fraud. Biden and Harris aren’t pushing universal mail-in voting; that, instead, was driven by state leaders who wanted to offer an alternative form of voting, given the coronavirus pandemic. Only five states moved to mailing out ballots automatically, four of which Trump is in no danger of winning.

This may simply be a function of Pence’s first job priority, which is to amplify whatever Trump has to say. Pence wants a second term as vice president and then one or two as president, so he is going along with the playbook. To that end, he left Page’s question unanswered both directly — he never actually gave an answer — but also indirectly, making it unclear whether he would actually stand in Trump’s way, should the electorate want him removed.

Normally, we would assume that this was just rhetoric. But there’s an ongoing undercurrent within Trump’s party arguing that there’s validity to rejecting the popular will. It’s a central tenet of the fight over the Supreme Court vacancy, but it’s also at times explicitly stated, as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) did after the vice-presidential debate.

Mike Pence is a party guy. He was the establishment counterweight to Trump in 2016 and the liaison to the party over the course of Trump’s presidency. Now, he’s lining up with Trump on a fundamental question about the will of the American people.

If their will is that Trump leave office, we cannot assume that Pence will support that decision.