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July 16, 2024 - 12:15am
Whether J.D. Vance is a good conservative is a separate question from whether he’s a good senator. Whether he’s a good senator is separate from whether he’s a good vice presidential candidate, which is separate from whether he’s a good man. Untangling this knot won’t come easily to pundits and powerbrokers, eager to find a coherent narrative. One takeaway is obvious: this is a victory for the “New Right,” a movement that sprung up after Trump’s 2016 victory to add intellectual and political meat to Trump’s populist bones.
Just last week, Vance spoke at the annual National Conservative Conference. “NatCon,” as it’s known, is both mainstream and edgy in the sense that what was once an edgy movement in 2016 is slipping into the mainstream today. Vance’s Senate office is staffed not with old hands from the GOP machine, but young intellectuals who rarely miss an event like NatCon and harbour as much disdain for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as they do for Biden.
As to the question of whether Vance is a good conservative, there really is no middle ground. For proponents of the New Right, he’s an excellent standard bearer. For others, he is an opportunistic statist. But there’s no doubting his impressive rise: Vance, who was born in Ohio to a family with Kentucky roots, was raised by his grandparents amid divorce and drug addiction before enlisting in the Marines during the Iraq War, only to then found his way to Yale Law School and Silicon Valley. His best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, mirrors the journey towards Trump that other conservatives also experienced, through essays like Claremont’s “Flight 93 Election,” and events like the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation.
Elected just two years ago, Vance’s freshman term has been a busy one. He led the charge against the GOP’s support for US aid to Ukraine, backed Biden’s controversial Federal Trade Commission chairwoman amid robust attacks from Wall Street, and championed bipartisan legislation to crack down on the rail industry in the wake of the East Palestine derailment in his home state.
What Trump will get from Vance is an expert media critic, a loyal surrogate, and an intellectual heavyweight. Furthermore, he is a man better than almost anyone at connecting with Trump voters on their own terms and in their own language. But it’s also possible that his selection may turn off independents, even while resonating with disenchanted Democrats.
Democrats feel like the pick is a boost to Biden — or anyone who heads the ticket in his stead — given that Vance is easily tied to “Project 2025” and the broader Maga cinematic universe. As such, one longtime GOP Senate staffer texted UnHerd on Monday to say Vance’s selection “Puts establishment Washington on notice, from the CIA to K Street.”
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SubscribeI find it curious that Vance isn’t more popular. If anyone high up the political class understands the concerns of the working class, of the people who aren’t rich men north of Richmond, it would surely be him.
Vance isn’t a very pleasant man though. Still, being unpleasant doesn’t seem to have hurt Trump.
That said, I like Vance a hell of a lot more than I like DeSantis.
Popular with the media is not the same as popular with the people. One of the easiest ways for the media to push their elite favored politicians is to give those politicians the interviews, soundbites, commentary, and publicity. His perceived popularity could easily go up substantially with a bit more press, which the media now basically has to give him. If there’s a VP debate I expect he will utterly humiliate Kamala.
Totally agree. Especially your first sentence. Vance will be the future of the Republican Party. The Democrats currently have no future thanks to their elites and media.
There’s a suspicion among many ‘America First’ Republicans that he is too close to the military industrial complex, and a dislike of the fact that he is vocally supported by AIPAC and is quite ‘Israel First’. Also his calls for strikes against Iran.
MAGA are also a little wary of his 2016 ‘Never Trump’ history. The flip-flopping troubles some people.
From what I can see, he has flipped (from Trump detractor to supporter). He has yet to flop (back to Trump detractor.) Many people can handle a change of heart, provided it isn’t followed up with a change back later.
What Trump needs most of all are people who share his political vision and who are loyal to him. Failing to select such people for senior positions in his last administration were his key mistake. Vance seems to be politically on the same page as Trump. The question is whether he can avoid outshining his new boss if Trump is elected.
I’ve just been looking at some of the (quite unpleasant) things Vance said about Trump before his “conversion” to the MAGA movement. If he becomes VP, and Trump dies during his term (he is after all almost as elderly as Biden, and quite obese), everyone might find that President Vance is his own man.
Yeah, good point. But I don’t think he’ll try to undermine Trump in the meantime.
No matter who wins the election, being the VP is likely to provide a quick ride to the top job.
It’s to be hoped he’s capable of being “his own man”. Anything else would disqualify him from the highest office.
From this side of the Atlantic, he looks Presidential to me, so a great pick for the GOP to succeed after Trump (should Trump win again).
Well, my point is that at the moment, it suits Vance to be “at one” with Trump on everything. However, with Trump no longer around, America might find that President Vance might have quite different policies to the late President Trump.
So do you agree with him that the UK is an Islamist country?
You’ve posted that remark twice on this page so I’ll repeat my response to you…
Why don’t you give the context of his remark? – JDV was having banter with a friend (at NatCon last week) regarding the recent Labour election victory.
A country where a schoolteacher is forced to hide from Islamist mobs (after receiving no support from the authorities), where an MP has been murdered by an Islamist, where another MP resigns due to fear of attack by Islamists, where Islamist imams openly preach violent hatred toward the Western world, where multiple murderous attacks against British citizens have been committed by Islamists (who were previously known to the intelligence services) is most definitely headed in that direction. To deny this is abject appeasing cowardice.
I live there. Do you?
And you’re unwilling to defend your own country?
“Quite obese”? Trump is 6’ 4”, doesn’t drink, drug, or smoke, and speaks extemporaneously for hours at huge rally after huge rally. He took a bullet, got right up, and went on to the next event. He’s more fit than many Gen Xers.
Vance was an excellent choice. His personal story is remarkable, he will be the opposite of that slimy sh*t Pence, and can deliver eight years of sensible governance post-Trump.
Inshallah
Just a note on the author’s final line: it’s entirely possible to be both sincere and opportunistic. Indeed, without the latter, sincerity gets you nowhere.
A victory for the ‘New Right’ perhaps, but when Trump wins he’ll get the knock on the door, will be shown the file – his file – and he’ll fall into line just like Speaker Johnson did.
Not so sure. Trump might be the only person in DC whose not intimidated by “his file”. He’s a bit of a genius; but also a bit of a nut, isn’t he?
Is it possible that Trump for once is looking beyond himself and into the future? Jd Vance adds nothing to his ticket, but this choice adds a solid, electable Republican for the 2028 election and beyond.
Vance’s selection means millennials are beginning to get a seat at the political table.As a boomer, I agree it’s time to pass the torch to the millennials, at least those who are capable of thinking for themselves.
It looks like Ukraine’s in trouble.
Vance just told us all that the fist Islamist country to get nuclear weapons would be the UK. Some intellectual heavyweight.
Why don’t you give the context of this remark? – banter with a friend (at NatCon last week) regarding the recent Labour election victory.
Nothing to do with intellectual rigour at all….
Banter or tongue in cheek?
Seems like a pretty shrewd observation to me.
2028
Vance is representative of the political realignment that has been taking place for more than a decade.
The old guard in both parties are struggling to understand what is happening, why, what it means, and how to deal with it.
The democrats have lost the working class to the republicans. They just have. But they have always assumed that the working class was theirs. The republican establishment has no idea how to respond to these new members or even knows if it wants them.
The democrats have gone all in on identity politics and have always assumed that anyone not a White male or insane would vote for them. But yet, the republicans are becoming more diverse in terms of race, gender and faith and the democrats have no idea why. They cannot get past the idea that race and gender are all that matter to people. The republican old guard is not used to having women that are half Asian and half Black as their candidates and realizing that they are going to have to consider their interests to keep their votes.
The answers are really simple and they tie back to Trump.
The democrats, assuming what they did, that anyone not a White male and anyone working or middle class would be there for them, sold out the working class economically and socially in order to win the support of the Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Manhatten, college professor, left. They became neoliberal economically and neoconservative on war and foreign policy. Free traders and war mongers. They became old school republicans to support the CIA, defense industry and Wall Street bundlers.
The anger among the electorate was CLEAR after 2008. All the signs were there but the two parties refused to see it or were afraid to. They refused to see the anger or figured that people had no place to go so they would suck it up. You could have neoliberal economics with a side of abortion or neoliberal economics without abortion. Those were your choices.
Then comes along Trump and he talks about every issue that these working class and middle class voters cared about in a way that mattered to them and they loved him for it. They finally had someone in one of the parties that spoke to them and their issues. Hillary called them deplorables. Media figures mocked them. Not Trump. He embraced them. He brought them into the republican fold because that was the party he chose to take over.
Trump broke the republican establishment, the party of the Mitch McConnel’s and Mitt Romney’s. He has been and is in the process of rebuilding it into something new and foreign to its older members and the democrats.
The democratic party is now broken. It broke throwing itself against a wall called Donald J Trump. It is fracturing into pieces. Biden is not the man to rebuild it for the future. It has taken a decade for the new republican party to emerge and come to power. It will likely take the democrats longer without fresh blood.
Outstanding analysis.
Well said. That’s about the size of it. Future historians will record 2008 as the beginning of the end for the neoliberal consensus. For anyone who doesn’t remember, there were polls showing 80%, yes 80%, a margin even Putin would be proud of, of Americans opposed the 2008 bank bailout. This is a supposedly free and democratic country, a country whose government is supposedly “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, a country that prides itself on starting the democratic trends that eventually spread to every European nation. When that government of that country passes a measure that 80% of people disapprove of with virtually no opposition from either party or any established politicians, something is very clearly wrong and there’s not much the elites could do to fix it. They may have been right. Letting the banks fail might have been worse and might have triggered a 2nd Great Depression, but it doesn’t matter because the bottom line is that the representatives of the people ignored the popular will, and in America, that simply cannot stand, and it hasn’t. Almost everything since has reflected the people’s discontent. The Tea Party, Bernie Sanders, Trump, the Freedom Caucus, and on and on, and it’s far from over.
One other thing of note. For better or worse, history will not forget Donald Trump. Whether he deserves it or not (he probably doesn’t), he will get credited in the future as an agent of profound change, the avatar for a rising populism and the herald of the end for the neoliberal globalist aristocracy. They have fought him with everything they have. They have won many battles, but are still losing the war.