And thank God for that.
Let’s be clear about something: as recently as ten or fifteen years ago, a figure like Vance would not only not be a vice-presidential nominee for the Republican party, he probably wouldn’t even be a senator. He’d be politically homeless. And there’s a simple reason for that: his positions on the issues would alienate both parties. Democrats of the late Obama era would find his disdain for identity politics and devout Christianity to be markers of an evil, declasse white hick. Republicans, meanwhile, would’ve seen his criticism of big business and unfettered capital and declared him, with one voice, an entitled millennial socialist.
Only the “millennial” part is accurate. At 39, Vance is the first millennial to serve on a major party ticket. And when it comes to economics, his sin is the same as numerous other people of his generation: that of noticing that the times have changed. The free market triumphalism of the GOP’s past made sense in a country where upward mobility and a livable income were both quietly guaranteed by the federal government. That government instituted policies to protect American industry from cheap, inferior foreign imports, American jobs from cheap foreign labor, and American wages from a race to the bottom, which favored companies seeking to pad their profit margins for the sake of investors rather than engaging in any actual innovation. Whereas with the turn of the 21st century, all of those trends were indulged and encouraged, first by Bill Clinton with the job bloodbath known as NAFTA, and then by George W. Bush’s attempt to export Americanism through global trade, which only resulted in America importing more and making less than it ever had. And it might have continued, had not the Great Recession unmasked the massive amounts of shady and borderline fraudulent behavior in the financial sector. As a result of the soaring price of basic assets like homes and stocks after this cataclysm, most people under the age of 50 feel priced out of not just prosperity, but of basic financial independence. If that is what happens when you “let the market decide,” then no sane politician should favor such a thing happening ever again.
But, of course, it isn’t. J.D. Vance’s positions on breaking up monopolies and big businesses are an implicit recognition of this. Even the greatest libertarian thinkers, such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, were anti-monopoly. So is Vance. What’s more, he clearly understands that outright socialism is a dead end. Even if capitalism has a spotty record on providing people with what they need, socialism’s reaction is nothing but spots. Vance, whose book Hillbilly Elegy offers a thoughtful account of the ways in which individual bad behavior and the cruelty of an indifferent economy intersect, understands this, which is why he has struck a position that is only anti-business in the sense that it is anti-corporate, but is otherwise solidly pro-market. Small wonder that the smaller players in Silicon Valley love him (and even some of the not-so-small ones who are nevertheless kept out of the in-crowd due to politics, like Elon Musk and David Sacks), while the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have woken up in a cold sweat. We hope they keep doing so; if the past few days have shown us anything, it’s that Vance has the right enemies. Just as Donald Trump did when he pointed out the problems with the American economy in 2016, and in selecting Vance, committed the Republican party to solving those problems rather than shrugging their shoulders and mouthing platitudes written by the US Chamber of Commerce.
But while J.D. Vance is one highly visible way in which the GOP has acknowledged the changing tides of destiny, he’s not the only one. On the same day that Trump selected Vance, Amber Rose, of all people, spoke at the RNC. Yes, that Amber Rose. Apparently, when confronted by a Trump-supporting father, Amber Rose tried to prove him wrong by watching all of Trump’s rallies and meeting his supporters and discovered that, in her words, “Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re black, white, gay, or straight, it’s all love[…]These are my people. This is where I belong.”
This admission – a hard one to make for a woman in industries as overwhelmingly liberal as Rose inhabits -- was received rapturously at the convention. The only people who weren’t so rapturous were mostly people who’d never liked Donald Trump, either. Princeton professor Robbie George, an inveterate #NeverTrumper, was a representative figure when he shrieked on X, “Are you going to pass over this outrage – this hypocrisy – in silence? Don’t you see what is being done to the Party (sic)? Has no one any shame?”
Nothing’s being done to the party, professor. The party is doing it itself. And to be clear, while we’ll be the first to admit that Rose’s background is unconventional (to say the least) for an RNC speaker, we don’t see why this is a problem. Her speech was thoroughly inoffensive and commonsensical. It was the kind of speech that will give pause to the sorts of young people who are used to seeing the GOP as the party of sexless, humorless prudish fun police (in other words, people like Robbie George). Amber Rose simply existing on the RNC stage is no vice; it’s emblematic of the fact that the Right is now a big tent and a unifying force, rather than the kind of narrow, judgmental sect that nearly turned off two generations. America already has woke people to tell them they’re dirty little boys and should go to their room. We don’t need two versions of that. The Grand Old Party is finally becoming more like just that: a party. No one should have a problem like that unless they’re the kind of person who’s never been invited to one.
We’ll give George and his ilk this, however: Rose’s speech didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened as the GOP had just approved a platform – heavily influenced by Trump himself – which called for abortion to be left up to the states, and which abandoned the party’s stance on gay marriage. But this, too, is a concession not to evil, but to democracy. Donald Trump did more for the pro-life cause than any American president when he appointed the judges which struck down Roe v Wade. That move was, itself, a gambit: it allowed the American people to have their say on abortion, which they should have had all along, and of which Roe deprived them. In the years since, that position has become obvious: Americans – even in bloodred states like Kansas – are basically okay with abortion, though not to an unlimited degree. You may not like it, but that’s political reality, and if you want to change it, you have to persuade people – including many in your own party – that your position is worth risking possibly the most important election of our lifetimes in order to die on your particular hill. That means persuading the people, not demanding that their representatives affirm your priorities without question because it’s what we’ve always done, even though the reason it was always done was precisely because there was nothing they could do about it because of Roe (which, just to repeat, Trump’s judges ended after half a century).
What’s more, the fact that twelve Republican senators voted to pass the Respect for Marriage Act and suffered no political consequences for it shows that at least some red state electorates have made their peace with gay marriage. What they haven’t made their peace with is transing kids, DEI, porn in grade school classrooms, and any number of other culture war issues where it was the Left who insisted on purity tests and blanket allegiance rather than offering any attempt to persuade. The Right did the persuasion on those issues, and won. We suggest those who object to the platform start doing the same.
In fact, that is what we would say to everyone who mourns the death of the old Republican party (for it is dead): persuade. After all, that’s what Trump did. He persuaded the GOP to somehow become the party of both Amber Rose and J.D. Vance, a feat that even we would’ve thought impossible until it happened. And how did Trump do that? Not, pace the Left, with exclusion. No. What Trump did was reject the idea that the politics of subtraction make sense. That principled losses are better than pragmatic victories. That purity of intentions and beliefs trumps the reality of power. For his trouble, he has made the GOP a party that meets Americans where they are, not one that lectures them from the safety of cosseted corporate sinecures and academic irrelevance. His GOP is the party of the people as they are, not as the elites wish them to be. And because his party, like his vice president, understands and accepts the people as they are, it is also capable of elevating them. It can make them rich, strong, healthy, and hopeful again. It can create a new conservative revolution through the most obvious means – by giving most Americans a country that they will recognize as worth conserving. Because Trump understands that when that happens, and only when that happens, will America not only be great again, but it will stay that way for ourselves and our posterity.
