Vance occupies an indispensable position for the future of his faction in ways that nobody else does for other factions of the party.
On social media and in the commentariat, the right has spent the past few months in a sort of numb denial, talking about anything and everything but the midterm elections, the things that are moving voters away from Republicans in those elections, and any policy that Republicans could reasonably hope to enact before those elections.
One of the gathering storms of late has been a series of battles or proxy wars over JD Vance. Some of the ire is about whether Vance has been ill-treated by his erstwhile booster Rod Dreher, but frankly, with no disrespect to his prominence as a writer, Rod Dreher isn’t why this debate gets so emotional so quickly. The most pro- and anti-Vance camps have also been slinging charges at one another of being paid and/or coordinated “ops.” All of this is inside baseball that produces far more heat than light.
Now, some of what’s going on is simply the early signs of the 2028 presidential primaries wheezing to life, as they typically do at a low level of anxiety months before anybody can seriously see a field taking shape. And there is also doubtless some frustration from Vance’s supporters — and even to some extent his critics — at the fact that, as vice president, he’s not totally free to stake out public positions of his own, especially on the Iran war, Ukraine, and other foreign policy hot buttons — in addition to which Vance has been largely absent lately for family time after welcoming his fourth child.
Precisely because Vance’s theory of the 2028 nomination assumes his status as the anointed successor of Trump, there are some clear incentives to show strength and run other prospective candidates off the road early. That applies especially to Marco Rubio, Vance’s most obvious rival for Trump’s favor as well as that of Republican voters. Rubio may be dangerous to Vance, but he also has some significant incentives to wait for 2032, not least of which is that he plainly likes being secretary of state and is accomplishing a lot in the job, but you can’t stay in that role while running for president.
But there’s an additional reason, I think, why Vance produces so much heat: there’s only one of him. For a Reaganite of my persuasion, there are a good many people in major Republican office who are to varying degrees in line with me philosophically, including Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, Glenn Youngkin, Tom Cotton, Greg Abbott, Mike Johnson, John Thune, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Kim Reynolds, among others. Some of those people are more or less conservative on various issues, and some are more or less MAGA-adjacent or MAGA-resistant, but they all reflect the basic mainstream of the post-Reagan party.
But if you want JD Vance to lead the Republican Party, there’s no second choice. There are other MAGA figures, but even limited to the ones who have won significant statewide office or major leadership roles, many of them are quite different from Vance on foreign policy and/or economic policy, none of them has Vance’s status as a national figure, and few of them match his elite credentials — the best-selling book, the Yale degree, the close relationship with Silicon Valley.
None, except for maybe Donald Trump Jr., could plausibly run as the heir apparent to Trump. Some of the people who share a number of Vance’s premises, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, have already wigged out of the GOP tent. Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for president carrying some of Vance’s foreign policy views, is a much more libertarian figure on economic and size-of-government issues, plus he is far from certain to win his current race for governor of Ohio (an office having little say on foreign affairs). Vance is the first figure since Pat Buchanan to really represent his particular philosophical niche at a high-profile level, and even Buchanan (who never won an election) was never really as much of a big-government New Dealer as Vance. Add to that the fact that Vance has circles of intellectuals and tech enthusiasts who have scaled back their efforts at public persuasion on the apparent theory that it’s more important to pitch to an audience of one man who may soon hold power, and you can see why the 41-year-old Vance occupies an indispensable position for the future of his faction in ways that nobody else does for other factions of the party.