A mixed messenger
JD Vance is trying to juggle moral values and MAGA populism.
JD Vance is visiting a church in Phoenix this week to explain why he thinks Donald Trump should be president again.
Vance is pretty new to politics. He won a Senate race in Ohio in 2022. He is firmly in the America First faction of the Republican Party. As a nationalist, he rejects free trade. He is more isolationist on foreign policy than traditional conservatives. Instead of championing free markets, Vance wants the government to actively push citizens to be “better” in terms of moral behavior and family values.
One of the problems for Vance is that he has been trying to do two things at once. He wants to integrate his Christian faith with his governing philosophy. But at the same time, he has been climbing to the top of a political party that is enamored with vulgarities.
Over the past few years, Vance has been a guest on many right-wing podcasts. In one instance, he referred to “childless cat-ladies” being “miserable in their lives.” He was arguing that people without biological kids don’t have a direct stake in the future of the country because their DNA is not being passed on.
JD Vance has not backtracked from this argument. He has softened the tone of the argument by saying that, on the occasions where he sounded cruel, he was merely being “sarcastic.” His main point still stands: He thinks it is morally edifying to have kids, and he wants to enact government policies to encourage people to have more kids.
Personally, I don’t see any correlation between civic virtue and the amount of kids you have, but I can understand why a politician would promote child tax credits and things like that.
Vance could have touted his pro-family policy program without stooping to immature taunts, but he was trying to make a name for himself in the new GOP.
I feel bad for JD Vance, somewhat. He reminds me of Kari Lake in the sense that, before they turned MAGA and joined in with the vulgarities and crudeness, they were both well-respected and respectful individuals.
After publishing a popular memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance became a public intellectual. He was a frequent guest on television news programs. People valued his insights about what was happening with the white working class in America. Vance grew up poor, in a broken home, but he found his way to Yale Law School with the help of people who believed in him.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Vance wrote an essay for The Atlantic arguing that Trump was offering false promises. The article was provocative because Vance compared Trump to the drug addiction crisis that was ravaging working class communities. The essay was a scathing rebuke of MAGA populism:
During this election season, it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever. It too, promises a quick escape from life’s cares, an easy solution to the mounting social problems of U.S. communities and culture. It demands nothing and requires little more than a modest presence and maybe a few enablers. It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.
Vance said it was a “great tragedy” that people had fallen for Trump, because the problems in America were serious. People were broken, and they needed to be lifted up. But the solution was not found in MAGA, and the consequences of this mistake would be known in time:
There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.
Eight years after writing that essay, JD Vance is now on the Trump ticket, serving as an Ivy-League apologist for the “opioid of the masses.”
To his credit, JD Vance has explained why he changed his mind about Trump. He says Trump surprised him by being a good president.
I don’t like when people talk about being on the “right side of history” because it sounds preachy and implies an inevitably that doesn’t exist. But I think historians will have a hard time squaring Vance’s essay — a trenchant criticism published on the Fourth of July — with Vance becoming Trump’s political sidekick.
In 2016, Vance was making a deeper argument about MAGA populism. He wasn’t arguing against any specific policy ideas. He wasn’t arguing that Trump was too incompetent to enact his policies. Vance was concerned about a cultural mindset and a moral worldview. He wanted to lift people up with self-confidence, and he thought Trump was encouraging people to lash out and blame others for their brokenness.
When Vance gave his vice-presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Republican convention this year, his rhetoric was full of MAGA populism. He blamed “America’s ruling class” for the problems in society, and he pointed to Trump as the solution to these problems.
Win or lose in 2024, JD Vance is in a precarious spot.
If they lose, he’s going to be scapegoated. If they win, he’s going to face moral dilemmas that future generations will read about.
Vance’s predecessor, Mike Pence, was faced with a moral dilemma after the 2020 election. In Congress on January 6, 2021, Pence was presiding over the counting of the electoral college votes. MAGA populists were pressuring Pence to unilaterally reject the votes of swing states like Arizona. Pence felt he had an obligation to the Constitution, and he followed his conscience.
JD Vance has said that he would have made a different choice:
If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.
To be selected as Trump's running mate in 2024, this is the kind of answer that was required.
It is theoretical, at this point, what specific moral dilemmas Vance will face in the future. But history has shown that he will eventually need to decide between his professed values and the demands of MAGA populism. Some would argue that he has already made his decision.
Vance looks like a deer in headlights. How he can be so misogynistic with a wife, seemingly so accomplished, outside the home is a puzzle. If he is so interested in helping poor families why, as I read in the mainstream media, did he vote against SNAP, which helps with food for the indigent? That’s a deal breaker.
And thanks Billy for your insight.