16/07/2024
Meet JD the flip flopper JD Vance.
So Donald Trump has selected his running mate and his Vice President. It’s JD Vance. He was critical of Trump and a fierce opponent to him in 2016 comparing him to Hi**er and saying Trump could be "America's Hi**er” during one of his TV interviews.
Vance has since deleted some of his tweets and his past comments such as “I am never Trump guy”, that Trump is a “terrible candidate”. “Here is another comment from JD, “Idiot, if you vote for him.”
Some think this is very exciting and illustrates how Trump has conquered and transformed his party. In March 2022 Vance changed his mind.
When Trump ran with Mike Pence in 2016, it was a same-sex wedding to the Republican establishment.
Mike was very conservative; insiders hoped that he might temper his boss. Vance, by contrast, is a total product of the populist revolution and media will enjoy poking the bear in the coming weeks.
Born to a blue-collar family in southwest Ohio, with a traumatic upbringing made famous by his book and now a movie. Hillbilly Elegy. Vance profiles America’s left-behind people The Donald seeks to represent, by low paid workers and an unhealthy culture of addiction.
But Vance warmed to his views on free trade, immigration, and foreign intervention, and gradually established himself as an unofficial philosopher of the Maga movement. He is a former marine and Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
In 2022, he won the GOP nod for Senate for Ohio following Trump’s endorsement. In other words, Trump has picked a man who owes his career and political identity to... Trump. This is a potential successor, a man who can carry the torch of his revolution, perhaps giving it the intellectual coherence it otherwise lacks.
Vance, has converted to Catholicism, proceeds by philosophy. As a Senator, he has been a textbook social conservative, yet defended social security and attacked big banks. This is unusual on the American Right, perhaps closer to European Christian democracy. It’s a politics aimed squarely at the values and needs of the working-class.
Moderates will be disappointed – some fantasised that Nikki Haley’s return to the convention meant she might join the ticket – and critics will pore over Vance’s opposition to US funding for the war in Ukraine.
But for anyone who cares about the future of conservatism and the art of politics, this is a win. Many in Capitol Hill say Vance will wipe the floor with Kamala Harris at one of the planned VP debates. His supporters say Vance will bring new, fresh and clean ideas to the next White House.
