J.D. Vance links
Jennifer Tiedemann; Damon Linker; River Page; Ian Ward
The selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate cements MAGA populism and anti-liberalism as fundamental parts of the Republican platform that will likely persist long after Trump himself is gone from the political scene. For more traditional GOPers that have felt bereft of a political home for some time now, it is less likely than ever that they’ll be able to come back to the party of Ronald Reagan.
Similarly, Damon Linker writes,
Until the announcement of his choice of Vance, it made sense to assume Trump’s eventual passing from the scene might issue in at least a partial reversal of the slowly building changes in the GOP over the past eight years. The Reaganite-libertarian center-right would attempt to reassert control and turn back the clock to the years when Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were the (half-hearted) choice of Republican voters.
With Vance now elevated to Trump’s anointed successor, such a reversal has become all but inconceivable (assuming, as seems likely, the Republican ticket defeats the Democrats in November). Trumpism now has an ideological heir, leaving the Reaganism that’s been shunted to the side for the past eight years well and truly dead.
Mr. Trump’s party does leave room for establishment Republicans: under the bus, next to the libertarians. Have a nice day, fellas.
I see Mr. Vance as an intellectual with no management experience. His life story is a big part of his personal brand. A lot like Barack Obama, but without the faculty-lounge worldview. I should note that he went from one extreme view of Mr. Trump (“he’s Hitler”) to the other extreme view that the 2020 election was stolen. Neither view ever resonated with me.1
Ms. Harris cannot hope to beat Mr. Vance in a debate. Her goal has to be to speak loftily enough to come across as a credible potential President herself. What are the odds that she clears that bar?
There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind. People, including politicians, do it all the time. What sets J.D. Vance apart from the fray is the nakedness of his ambition, his self-import. In his memoir, Vance presents the chaos and misfortunes of his family not as communal tragedies but as obstacles that stood in the way of his own personal success, obstacles he—unlike almost everyone else in his family—bravely overcame. Some might call it narcissistic, but in the South we call it uppity.
For Politico, Ian Ward writes,
As Vance himself confessed earlier this year, he is “plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures.” His transition from Never-Trump conservative to MAGA firebrand was influenced by his relationships with a handful of niche conservative writers and thinkers.
Ward’s article lists Patrick Deneen2, Peter Thiel, Mencius Moldbug3, Rene Girard, Sohrab Ahmari, the Claremonsters, and Rod Dreher.
Vance spoke last Wednesday evening at NatCon4. I did not attend in person, because it conflicted with my favorite Zoom dancing session.
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While people seem driven to rate Mr. Trump on a scale of 1 to 10 as either 1 or 10, my feeling is about 3 or 4. That happens to be higher than my feeling about Mr. Biden, which is about 2 or 3.
I am not fan. In part, I wrote “Deneen accuses liberalism’s defenders of trying to solve the problems of liberalism with more liberalism. I must plead guilty. I think that if we could bring true liberalism to political discussions, then I personally would be less fearful for our future.”
I saw Curtis at NatCon4 last week, although he was an attendee, not a speaker
Reaganism in the 2020s or Bushism in the 2020s really makes absolutely no sense. VD Vance hints at this in one of his NatCon speeches.
Those types envisioned America as a place that [1] enforced a particular social and moral order on the rest of the world. [2] Had a trade policy where America's comparative advantage was as a reserve currency where the rest of the world parked their excess savings and the US focused on IP rents and importing most of it's manufactured goods.
A country that can't manufacture its own ships and weapons doesn't get to enforce it's vision of world peace and human rights. Period. People who get offended by this keep thinking the people like me simply like Vladamir Putin and want Liberal democracy to burn. Perhaps we do think that liberal hegemony has a bit of blood on its hands, perhaps setting Libya on fire is a small price to pay for preventing the chaos of a multipolar world. But the guys on the other side literally can't process that right does not make might. They're geopolitical world view is basically a Marvel movie where logistics and strategy don't matter and the plucky good guys always win.
Ukraine might still be winning the war on Twitter but on the ground it's Germany late '43 early '44. And as far as Taiwan goes, the gap the industrial gap between America and China today is essentially an analogy between Japan and America in 1941, with America in the "Six months of fighting and after that no expectation of success". (Except America still has natural resources). Both countries will be lost as long as the other side doesn't give up.
As far as deficits go, the Trump tax cuts were a Paul Ryan Mike Pence thing as much as they were a Trump thing. America really is circling a black hole when it comes to government spending, and there's nothing in pre-trump republicanism that has any positive inspiration.
The only thing the GOP has lost is a pretense of civility.
This is the actual private message from Vance to his friend (who disclosed it) from 2016. Note that it's more than 2 words long.
"I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," Vance wrote. "How's that for discouraging?"
And really, did nothing happen between 2016 and 2024 that might have changed Vance's (or anybody else's) mind?