Many parallels have been drawn between the Trump of today and the GOP of the past. Trump is, as one comedian remarked, the only Republican today who both wants to be funny and is funny. Reagan made us laugh too, but his gentility has been replaced with a tendency to crudity, and this is something not so easily stomached by those of a cosseted 21st-century condition.
The Republican policies of the past made sense in the past; the unremitting focus on tax cuts was sensible in the 80’s, and the aggressive prosecution of proxy wars more-or-less contained the Soviet Union. But these are of less importance this century and Trump has rightly moved the party onward. GOP elites buried the zombie Reaganism that the Bushes, McCain, and Romney all peddled. It became a party that primarily cared about working-class Americans.
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Trump, as Coney Island carnival barker, is undeterred by attacks from the “great and the good”. Unbothered by their manners and norms, he appeals to middle America, who have seen the GOP of the past ignore their immigration, housing, and job concerns. This is the central swathe of society drowning in the rising tides of cheap labor. These are the civilians in desperate need of courageous spokespeople to shine light on their struggling circumstances without fear of erroneous racist labelling.
Centrists are making peace with Trump’s flaws. Sometimes you need to fight back, and risk besmirching the notional sanctity of the office, in order to preserve the foundational principles of the country that ensure its survival. Many dreamed of the day when someone might revivify the collapse of American manufacturing, but without living in a golden tower.
If yesterday’s debate was any indicator, that day came a lot sooner than expected. If Trump was the antithesis to the Bush thesis, JD Vance is the synthesis. Trump broke the Kennebunkport cartel’s dominance over ordinary Republicans, for which Americans owe him a debt of gratitude, and our votes too. But with Vance by his side, and in waiting, an even brighter future awaits.
Vance sounded like a president. He neatly sidestepped Walz’s crude attempts to focus attention on January 6th, the day Democrats and their media allies want to misremember as Trump’s attempted and unarmed coup d’état. While Trump interrupts when his opponents lie, Vance wryly glances at the camera. Masterful.
Vance exudes class and style as he addresses America’s most pressing issues:
Housing
Like much of the Western world, America faces a housing crisis. Walz backs Harris’ plan to subsidize housing by giving buyers government cash. But this flies in the face of basic economics: sellers simply raise home prices commensurately. This AEI study lays out the case in detail. There are two ways to drive prices down: increase the number of homes, or decrease the number of buyers.
To their credit, Harris and Walz have some plans to build new homes with government funds. Vance and Trump support this, but go much further. They plan to staunch the flow of illegal migrants, build on vacant Federal lands, and increase energy production in order to lower the costs throughout the process. As Trump says, “Drill, baby, drill”. Vance argued that deregulating the housing market will also lower prices. He’s right, of course, as Argentina has recently demonstrated.
Abortion
Vance applies nuanced thinking to sensitive social issues. Abortion is divisive, and he acknowledged that his views on the protection of the unborn are not popular everywhere. Like Trump, however, he drew attention to the radical policies pursued by Walz in Minnesota. He asked Walz, repeatedly, why he eliminated the requirement to care for infants born alive. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written on these appalling practices. Walz denied, repeatedly, that he had done as much, and, with help from the moderators, changed the subject. The recent ABC debate between Trump and Harris played out in exactly the same way. Republicans know the Democrats support extreme abortion policies that would be out of place in even the most progressive reaches of Europe. The Belgians and Norwegians allow abortion only in the first trimester or shortly after; in Minnesota, a gestational limit doesn’t exist at all. In fact, Communist countries, long known for their extreme abortion policies, are less extreme than Minnesota. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and North Korea have limits; only mainland China is in line with Walz’s policies.
Vance talked about a friend who had an abortion years ago in his poverty-stricken community. She felt, and seemingly still feels, that were she to bring the child into the world she would have ruined her life. Vance advocates increased support for pregnant women, regardless of cost to the taxpayer. This is increasingly normal thinking in the new Republican party, and it might also be the basis of a future grand bargain to protect both children and vulnerable women. This is increasingly the view of GOP-friendly think tanks. Michael Toscano of the Institute for Family Studies writes:
The prevailing view among Republicans for decades has been that the government shouldn’t support marriage and family directly, because to do so would be to empower Big Government. In January 2022, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) encapsulated this view when, commenting on legislation to extend the child tax credit, he said: “I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children.” Vance has broken with this reigning sentiment, and his genuine support for family policy—shared by several other notably younger Republicans in the senate—is part of an epochal change within the party.
Immigration
The way CBS framed the debate around immigration was cunning: “Senator Vance, do you support separating children from their families?”. I cannot think of a better way to sidestep this crucial issue’s substance while maneuvering voters (who are largely opposed to unfettered migration—and even support forcible deportation) unto ground favorable to Walz.
Vance handled this question informatively, and forcefully, but without anger at its unfair framing. Children suffer, said Vance, when they are trafficked, which is why it is so alarming that roughly 320,000 illegally trafficked children have disappeared into the country without our government knowing where they have gone. In order to stop the bleeding, Vance argued for a return to Trump-era policies that saw immigration at its lowest levels in recent memory.
Freedom of speech
Vance spoke of how “industrial scale censorship” and big tech threaten our democracy. It is alarming, Orwellian, totalitarian, how a small number of central players in big tech, legacy media, and left-wing governments collude in order to enforce docility in populations they view as herds to be nudged, not citizens to be persuaded. There is no doubt that this has happened on an frightening scale, as Meta’s own CEO has confirmed.
Walz’s response here was perhaps the most galling of the entire debate: “You cannot yell fire in a crowded theater”. Walz equates boy-who-cried-wolf scaremongering with those who respectfully raise their suspicions of indefinite lockdowns. Panicked Democrats masked small children, destroyed the educations of many more, and carved a multi-trillion-dollar hole in the American economy.
Sometimes you should shout “fire” in a theater. Notably, when the fire is real.