JD Vance offers the zeal of a MAGA convert
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attend the first day of the Republican National Convention, Monday, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. Credit: AP/Evan Vucci
When Republican Party nominee Donald Trump picked Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a notably devout Christian, as his running mate in 2016, it marked an obvious bid to galvanize evangelical conservatives. Such support for Trump back then was far from the sure thing it is today.
In his acceptance speech that year, Pence said, "When Donald Trump was taking my measure as a possible running mate, I did some observing myself. I've seen the way he deals with people who work for him at every level. And I've seen the way they feel about working for him."
The shelf life on that hopeful chatter proved woefully short, especially for top appointees, and especially for Pence. Voters know that on Jan. 6, 2021, the vice president refused to go along with the president's effort to sidestep the electoral vote that he lost. Pence became a MAGA protest target. Rioters shouted for him to be hanged, at a makeshift gallows outside the Capitol. Pence tried to run against Trump, but that’s all history now.
This time, the party’s vice-presidential slot goes to Sen. James David Vance. Trump, the uncontested leader of the GOP, looked this time for a different persona in a vice president, a kind of anti-Pence.
At 39, Vance is youthful, sharp, literate, a military veteran. He's been a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and he's a graduate of Yale Law School. His famous 2016 book "Hillbilly Elegy" described the struggles of his upbringing in Middletown, Ohio. The Marine Corps Times news site touts him as the "first post-9/11 veteran on a major party ticket."
Vance brings to the ticket the zeal of the convert. His transition from Never Trumper to MAGA stumper puts him far from where he stood in 2016. Back then, he panned Trump as "dangerous" and "unfit" for office and criticized the real estate heir for racist rhetoric, concerned that Trump could be "America’s Hitler."
Whatever makes him tick, nobody these days will contest Vance’s right to change his views and sign up. Like Trump, he seems to have pragmatically softened his anti-abortion stance. More significantly, Vance has said that unlike Pence he wouldn’t have certified the 2020 results right away, as is the constitutional process. Thus Vance, now a personal friend of Donald Trump Jr., falls in line in what’s still a highly divisive partisan fight.
Vance adopts Trump’s sketchy position on respecting the 2024 results. He’s presumed reliable enough to echo the ex-president on the economy, foreign policy, and cultural issues.
The strategy in picking Vance appears to be geographic, too. One Trump booster, Rep. Jim Jordan, the rejected candidate for House speaker, said Tuesday that Vance could help Republicans win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. "That’s an important part of why he was selected," Jordan told Fox Business.
Vance’s willingness to cross partisan lines might be useful in dealing with Congress if there’s another Trump administration. He and Ohio’s other senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, were known to work together on regional issues such as funds for a $20 billion Intel chip facility and rail safety bills as a reaction to the last year’s fiery toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Trump is 78 years old. If he wins in November, the Constitution bars him from running again in 2028. Being half his age might promise Vance a bright future. If the ticket wins, he could be the Trump party's chosen successor — rather than the kind of disposed asset Pence proved to be.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.