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I can’t say I recognize the Republican Party that Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, advocated for on stage during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate. In answer after answer, Vance talked about policies that sounded nothing like anything that any Republican has advocated during this election cycle. It certainly doesn’t sound like an administration that his running mate, former President Donald Trump, is likely to put into place should he win in November.
Let’s start with abortion, an issue that has been a drag on the GOP since the conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Vance waved off the idea that a national abortion ban is something that many Republicans support. Instead, he tried to humanize the issue, talking about a friend of his who felt she had to terminate a pregnancy and pushing for a string of “pro-family” policies that could help American families afford to raise kids. Later on, he added that the federal government should be investing in helping families pay for child care, using funding to help entice more child care workers into the field.
This could be what the campaign would have looked like if Trump wasn’t the nominee.
Vance further explained that, of course, the GOP wants to save the Affordable Care Act's ban on insurance companies using pre-existing conditions against people. He said there needs to be more housing made available for people to bring down the amount people are spending to have a roof over their heads. And he implied that Trump facilitated the peaceful transfer of power, downplaying the former president’s plot to try to overturn the 2020 election.
On the one hand, this could be what the campaign would have looked like if Trump wasn’t the nominee. He’s kept the most far-right plank of MAGA extremism, falsely blaming the majority of America’s problems on immigration. But he’s tried to sand off many of the edges, doing what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis failed to achieve in his primary campaign, presenting a version of Trumpism that could extend beyond Trump.
But recall Vance’s nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July. None of the sort of “compassionate conservatism” redux that he pitched on Tuesday night was present in that speech. And when you hold up his statements to what the GOP has done and proposed in the real world, there’s no way to make the two versions align. There is no support among Republicans in Congress for a new federal child care program, nor was there any desire to save the ACA among them. Vance was saying whatever he thought Americans wanted to hear — same as he will do if ever in a position to challenge Trump as his vice president.
Likewise, Vance worked to assure the audience that there was actually a lot that he and his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, agreed on and implied that Trump would look for bipartisan solutions if returned to the White House. It honestly sounded nice, a throwback to a semi-mythological era where things got done in Washington as both sides compromised for the good of the country.
But like most of the most promising words that come out of his and Trump’s mouths, it’s absolutely too good to be true. I’d love it if the Republican Party that Vance promoted was real. But there is no world in which a second Trump administration leads to a new era of common sense solutions. Vance’s claim otherwise may be the biggest, most disturbing lie that he told on stage.