Main Edition
US
FR
July 18, 2024 - 11:00am
Milwaukee
“He came from Appalachia and I came from Trump Tower in Manhattan,” said Donald Trump Jr on stage last night at the Republican National Convention. Trump Jr wasn’t pitching a sitcom: he was boosting his “friend” J.D. Vance just moments before the Ohio senator debuted as the party’s vice-presidential nominee.
Vance, jovial and upbeat, addressed the crowd much as he’s addressed conservative groups for years, not moderating a bit from his criticism of the GOP establishment, tearing into Nafta and “Wall Street barons” and the Iraq War and “America’s ruling class”. Nonetheless, he framed his speech by immediately describing the proceedings as “a night of hope”, lauding Donald Trump’s call for “national unity” after being shot on Saturday.
The senator said he wanted to “respond to [Trump’s] call for unity myself”, calling the GOP a “big tent” whose “disagreements make us stronger” and which is “unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution”. That’s not the message Vance sends to Mitch McConnell back in D.C., but it’s the one he now needs to send, tasked with a new mission to help Trump win voters beyond Ohio’s friendly borders.
Vance declared the GOP the party of “single moms”, celebrating his own mother’s ten years of sobriety as she watched on and mouthed “that’s my boy” while sitting feet from the former president. To loud applause, the Republican VP pick said his party would support the “working man” over “Wall Street”.
This is the same party that gathered in 2004 to renominate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. It’s the same party that cheered the Iraq War, and the same party applauded along as Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke about the “liberating breeze of democracy” and referred to pessimists who fretted over China’s rise as “economic girly men”.
Vance is not Mike Pence, and Mike Pence is not at the RNC. Nor are Bush or Cheney or their notable offspring. So will the RNC in 2028 feature union bosses and screeds against Wall Street? What about in 2032 and 2036? These questions feel impossible, especially in the context of a news cycle that feels like it was written by M. Night Shyamalan. But it’s central to the broader questions about whether, with Trump and Vance, the New Right won the war or merely a series of battles.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThe GOP establishment and party machine have a choice to make – prioritize their donors or their constituents. The party’s biggest problem is its contentment with being a minority, even when it has elected majorities. It’s as if Repubs are squeamish about governing and decision-making, something that no one will ever accuse Dems of being, though they also face a similar reckoning.
Let’s not forget that the left is now a staunch devotee of Wall Street and the surveillance state, things that not long ago, no self-respecting liberal would dare support. While Joe Biden was rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood crowd just a couple of weeks ago, people in blue cities are dealing with the fallout of his refusal to police the borders.
Why shouldn’t Republicans abandon Wall Street and big business? They abandoned Republicans 30 years ago. All the corporate money and institutional support goes to the Dems. It is absurd for the GOP to carry water for people who never support them.
It is starting to smell more and more like 1930s: protectionism, isolationism and industrial policy, and we all know where that led. Populist ideas are usually political pyrite mistaken for gold; short term they win election but eventually they leave everybody destitute.
Protectionism and industrial policy in the 19th century led to the US transforming from a largely agrarian backwater to an economic superpower. The US has more natural resources than anyone. Tariffs will cause human and financial capital to flow into the US as they did from 1865 to 1914.
If we ditch the absurd “green” policies the US can easily become the energy supplier to the entire Western world, and that cheap energy should enable a massive re-industrialization. Industry loves cheap energy. Drill, frack, and build nuclear, and maintain reasonable tariffs, and millions of industrial jobs will follow.
Those policies were a reaction to the Great Depression, the seeds of which were planted by WWI.
We can export and import goods from reliable partners without full blown protectionism, and we can avoid foreign adventuring without further neglecting our long neglected military.
What we can’t do is rely on unaccountable, bumbling, dishonest, left wing elites to do much of anything. COVID brought that into high relief.
Agency reforms, sound economic policies, lower taxes, and smaller, more accountable governments will arrest our decline.
The current course of debt-funded intrusion and bizarre policy goals, from energy to tech to basic law and order, is clearly unsustainable.
Yesterday I saw a hot discussion where participant A wrote –
– This stupid hillbilly from Apallachia…
Grammar Nazi B immediately corrected him
– Idiot, it should be written “Apalachia” with one “L”…
.
The second was closer to the truth, but I stopped following this heated exchange of opinions
I found Vance’s speech banal and lacking in any explanation of how he evolved from Trump hater (calling him “morally corrupt” and “America’s Hitler”) to Trump’s champion and VP nominee.
It would have done world’s of good to offer that insight, a path many disillusioned Democrats and others might have found resonated with their own muddled journey through this 2024 election cycle.