This week’s Republican National Convention has so far yielded few surprises. Donald Trump secured his third successive presidential nomination. Trump’s naming of U.S. Senator J. D. Vance as his running mate did not raise eyebrows either since the freshman senator was already shortlisted.
Vance’s comparatively brief public career has reflected an interesting but also unsurprising evolution. His 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, painted a bleak picture of the lives of Appalachian transplants in Ohio. Vance’s personal biography is presented as a paradox: A career in venture capital preceded by Yale Law School by way of Ohio State University and the Marine Corps. The book made him a media darling, an overnight pundit on the state of poor whites. A voice from the people who made good, one of us as it were. Vance was a Never-Trumper that election year, at one point tempting Godwin by speculating Trump might be a latter-day Hitler.
His election to the Senate in 2022 showed that Vance, like the Republican establishment, had “evolved” on the topic of Trump. Trump endorsed Vance, who defeated his opponent, Tim Ryan, by a healthy but unimpressive margin. Once in office, he fell into line. It paid off.
Vance’s positions have been variously described as national conservative to populist. He’s certainly a social conservative; the Heritage Foundation favored Vance as a candidate. His stated policy positions align quite well with its Project 2025 plan. While never liberal in his beliefs, he appeared a run of the mill conservative before he actually went into politics. To repeat, he fell into line.
Thus Vance’s views are alarming should he ever be in a position to act on them. It’s quite possible; the 39-year-old Vance is nearly half Trump’s age. Even if Trump completes his term, some of the editorial commentary has already anointed Vance as the heir to MAGA and he’s in scoring position for the 2028 nomination.
This week’s RNC solidifies a years-long trend. The Republican Party is wholly the Party of Trump. That’s the choice. With Biden’s obvious lapses and stubborn refusal to step aside as candidate, we have seen the future after November 5th.
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2024 The Unassuming Scholar
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