On J.D. Vance

In early 2016, I was on a train from New York to Washington for work. Typing furiously on my keyboard, I wrote a piece on RedState.com that said I would never vote for Donald Trump. My deputy editor at the time, Aaron Gardner, texted me that I should just use “Never Trump” and give it the hashtag #NeverTrump when I tweeted.

It’s a phrase a lot of people have since embraced. Aaron deserves the credit for it. It’s a phrase a Democrat venture capitalist from Ohio embraced as he declared he was “Never Trump” because, in his words, Trump was a fascist. That venture capitalist became a Republican senator and might become Vice President.

By 2020, both J.D. Vance and I had gone from Never Trump to supporting Trump. We both supported Evan McMullin in 2016 and watched McMullin go off the rails. It became abundantly obvious by 2020 that the nation would pick between Republicans and Democrats. The choice would be between a party driven mad by the woke activists burning down cities or the man with a bad character who had governed as a pretty reasonable Republican, masked by the drama of his behavior and mean tweets.

Many people want to attack J.D. Vance for supposedly conveniently transforming from Never Trump to being Trump’s vice presidential pick. Having transitioned to a Trump critic who’ll still support him (and gave him money on Sunday), I do not view it so cynically. Reality is a great teacher and there is a reason over fifty percent of Americans do not like Trump, but do now say they liked his tenure in office.

The Democratic Party is a party defined by woke policies, inflation, and weakness on the world stage. The world was not on fire when Donald Trump was President, and thanks to his judicial picks, Roe v Wade is dead. Trump also spoke up for the working class, a cause tied to Vance’s life’s work.

J.D. Vance is the pick of a presidential candidate who thinks he has won the race and wants a legacy. Few, if any, people will vote for Trump now who were not doing so five minutes before Vance’s nomination. Most of the people I know who are the most vocal Vance fans want him because they think he is the most tied to whatever they think Trump stands for.

As a conservative, frankly, my concern with J.D. Vance, who I like a lot personally, is that he is more of a Roosevelt Democrat than a Reagan Republican. He does not necessarily want smaller government, and while he correctly identifies economic problems, I’m not sure has the best solutions. He’s a Republican largely because the Democratic Party went nuts and hard left, not because he drifted right. But then so that also happened to Ronald Reagan, who was more practical than the mythology around him.

There is a difference, though. Ronald Reagan said the nine scariest words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” J.D. Vance believes the government is capable of helping more than I think it can. He’s been the loudest voice in the GOP in support of Lina Khan, the overly aggressive Chair of the Federal Trade Commission who is suing major and minor American businesses to push greater government control in free markets. Vance himself is not an advocate of free markets and is a fan of tariffs. He’s okay with government industrial policy and unionization — policies that often just built Potemkin villages to mask the collapse of industrial towns. He seems to prefer the Oren Cass economic approach, which itself is funded by major progressive donors.

But Vance is more, too. He is a family man. He is a good man. He has a compelling biography made famous in Hillbilly Elegy, which was a New York Times best seller. He has spoken up for forgotten Americans left behind by the country’s economic successes — something those of us who are free market supporters have done a poor job of. He is an advocate for strong families. He has given voice to the voiceless and has an empathetic streak that offsets some of Trump’s rough edges. J.D. Vance actually does care about the poor and the working class in a way many say they do, but don’t. He, married to a daughter of Indian immigrants, is the embodiment of the American dream.

He is a Marine who fought for his country. For some time, the nation has not had a veteran in an office as high as the Vice Presidency, let alone the Presidency. Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war and Vance fought in it.

While Vance opposes assisting Ukraine, and I support Ukraine, he is mindful of our military commitments and how thinly spread the military is. Because of his time in war, he is rightfully skeptical of nation-building exercises, but I think too willing to let go of America’s leadership in the world, which I think will be profoundly destabilizing.

He’s been on the outside of government, in the private sector. A lawyer by education, he did not practice law. In government and assisting behind the wheel of the ship of state, it is possible he shifts in his ideas of what works. And it is worth pointing out that his vision for the country is one every American should be able to agree with and he can articulate it without a teleprompter.

Other candidates could have expanded Trump’s potential constituencies and broadened his coalition and the GOP’s base. J.D. Vance does not do that. After the attempt on Trump’s life, all of Trump’s supporters will be his voters automatically. They will show up to vote for him. Vance adds nothing to the table not already there. He’s the choice of a man who is doubling down on his base and is not worried about needing to grow his coalition to win. He is not a candidate who brings many new voters to Trump.

It is notable that Nate Silver, who has given Trump a pretty hefty chance of winning in November, thinks Vance is one of the few candidates who could put Democrats back in the game. But Silver agrees with me that Vance is a long term play for Trump.

Vance is thirty-nine. He will outlast Trump through Trump’s limited ability to hold a term-limited office. Vance, himself, could go eight more years. He can reshape the Republican Party. It’ll be less Reagan and more Buchanan — decidedly a Trumpian political party of populists, nationalists, and isolationists. Both traditional free marketeers and traditional social conservatives will experience some discomfort in the transition. In fact, staunch pro-life advocates, already reeling from the GOP’s platform changes, are perhaps the least excited group with Vance. Many of them perceive his record and positions as moderate even as his words would place him as staunchly pro-life.

Vance’s pick is not disruptive in the short term but is the most disruptive possible pick for the GOP's future. He, not Trump, will be able to redefine the party in ways that could alienate existing portions of the base or grow the party in new ways depending on how he plays it.

A political novice, Vance must collaborate with those who can navigate, cut, and gut a federal bureaucracy that will resist. His first elected office is his present one, and he is not even halfway through his first term. He could serve as a great hatchet man for Trump, and putting Vance on stage against Kamala Harris would be like having Einstein debate Hawk Tuah girl. Notably, for Democrats who question his experience, it amounts to about the same resume as Barack Obama’s, but with military service in a war zone.

The future of the GOP is now in the hands of a man who, not too many years ago, was a Democrat and whose present economic policies align more with the party of Franklin Roosevelt than the party of Ronald Reagan. The realignment of the parties will only quicken after Trump, who is now truly a transition candidate, with a clear heir for a Trumpian future. Trump’s octogenarian opponent is a man out of time trying to hold back the forces in his own party breaking it apart.

That octogenarian called for a ceasefire in the heated rhetoric of the campaign on Sunday night to the nation. With Vance’s announcement less than 24 hours later, Democrats were back to claiming Trump Vance 2024 must be stopped at all costs to save democracy.

As a former Democrat who declared Donald Trump to be America’s Hitler then changed his mind, Vance will become more hated by the left than Trump. They will view him as an apostate.

What a time to be alive.