Why Is J.D. Vance A Thing?
On 7/6/2021, First Things writer Chad Pecknold tweeted the following:
There’s a very good reason why leftists and libertarians seek to smear @JDVance1: he’s a smart, affable, populist, conservative who can win elections, and defend ordinary Americans against the destructive ethos of cultural and market power arrayed against them.
This is in reference to Vance’s 7/1/2021 announcement that he is going to run for the United States Senate from the state of Ohio in 2022. Within hours, controversy arose over the fact that Vance had previously expressed dislike of former President Donald Trump. Vance voted for Evan McMullin in 2016 and in October 2016 tweeted this:
Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.
Despite this, the second Donald Trump was elected Vance jumped on the Trump gravy train. J.D. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy was called by The New York Times as one of the most important books to understand Trump’s 2016 victory — despite the fact it wasn’t even written by a guy who supported Donald Trump in 2016.
Either way, we’re all now supposed to care about what J.D. Vance thinks — in fact, we are now told, we’ve always cared about what J.D. Vance thinks. (Unless we are then criticizing his words, which we are forced to care about, then we are “smearing him” or “running hit pieces” on him.)
Mind you, J.D. Vance is not a thing — he’s a one time author who wrote a mildly successful book that appealed to a certain group of rural conservatives. Although even rural conservatives are insulted throughout Hillbilly Elegy, as they are told their poverty is not the fault is not the fault of the system being stacked against them, but it’s their fault for being so damn lazy. (Very odd thing for a populist to say.) Of course, Vance was never lazy even when he was poor — but he was the unlucky exception to the general rule, I guess.
Vance is also not very nice for those on welfare. At one point in Hillbilly Elegy, Vance talks about how some of the people he knew on welfare had cellphones while he could not afford one. Mind you, there are millions of circumstances — especially in a country where 97% of the population owns a cellphone — where someone could be part of the working poor and have a cellphone. (Also, complaining about people on welfare not being poor enough, how populist of you.)
I should also note that these complaints are particularly surprising coming from someone who considers himself a “populist.” This is because, just like his support for Donald Trump, Vance becoming a populist is nothing more than a grift. Vance’s opinions on the working poor expressed in Hillbilly Elegy match the exact same opinions Republicans have been spouting for years — but we’re supposed to believe that Vance is different because he also supports payed family leave.
J.D. Vance is another Republican running as nothing more than another Donald Trump. Of course, the Ohio Senate race already has a perfect Trump want-to-be in the form of Josh Mandel — who is just as bombastic as Donald Trump was along with backing Donald Trump’s policy, even bragging about being the first Ohio political to support Donald Trump. The fact is, if the Donald Trump supporters of Ohio want a candidate, Josh Mandel is much closer to “their guy” than J.D. Vance ever could be.
Now, would Ohio be better off having a grifter like Vance in the Senate or a principled insane person like Mandel? That’s a question for Ohio Republicans — and eventually Ohio voters — to answer, but it’s worth noting that Vance is a shameless grifter above all else.
Vance is yet another Trump-style Republican running for office, and Trump-style politicians have produced nothing but failure after failure. In 2017, the Trump-style Roy Moore failed so badly he made the state of Alabama elect a Democratic Senator. In 2020, the Trump style candidates — Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions, and Donald Trump himself — constantly loss. Even Steve King, who had been a member of Congress for over a decade, could not help but become part of the anti-Trump sweep in 2020.
Honestly, if you want to know just how bad these people have done throughout America, look at the few times they managed to succeed. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has risen as one of the big hopes of the MAGA Movement, but in an election where eight-million people voted, DeSantis won by roughly forty-thousand.
The fact is, the American people do not want enough Donald Trump. If they did, they would have elected Donald Trump to a second term and given Republicans majorities in the House and the Senate — none of which actually happened. But no matter how much the American people beg for something different, the Republican Party will not answer. They will shove Donald Trump down our throats until we stupid proles learn to love him — and his fight against the elite, of course.
The Republican Party will continue offering the American public more and more Donald Trumps. If they don’t realize the American people do not want that, they will likely soon stop existing as a party.
