The GOP has broken with its postwar tradition by unanimously backing a ticket that is deeply skeptical not just of U.S. support for Ukraine but even the promotion of democracy overseas. The Trump-Vance ticket is unapologetically populist and isolationist. Giving the party in its current form unified control over the executive and legislative branches would be a gamble that those hard-earned lessons from a century ago no longer apply.
How far has the party shifted from Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush? “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Mr. Vance said on Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast in February 2022. Instead, he has shown active skepticism of the Ukrainian cause — trying to roll back sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion, maneuvering to block the military aid package in the Senate and even traveling to the Munich Security Conference to criticize Ukraine.
Mr. Vance is undeniably talented and smart. The 39-year-old was elected to the Senate just two years ago with no prior governing experience. He served in the Marine Corps, including a tour in Iraq, and graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School before writing a 2016 memoir about growing up in a declining steel town with a mother addicted to drugs, “Hillbilly Elegy,” that made him famous. Promoting that book, Mr. Vance likened Mr. Trump to a hit of heroin (“an easy escape from the pain”) and routinely disparaged him. In July 2016, he wrote in The Post that Mr. Trump “offers a slogan about greatness with little substance to support it.”
Over time, though, Mr. Vance changed course. He positioned himself as socially conservative and economically illiberal. Mr. Vance supported a national 15-week abortion ban when he ran for the Senate in 2022 (though he has softened his stance in an effort to move closer to Mr. Trump’s own evolving position). He decries the power of big business and supports aggressive antitrust enforcement. He has become a leading spokesman of a movement sometimes called national conservatism or post-liberalism.
Whatever it’s called, it also involves engaging in the kind of weaponizing of power Republicans accuse Democrats of perpetrating. Mr. Vance said recently that, if he had been vice president on Jan. 6, 2021, he would not have certified the 2020 election the way Mike Pence did. This month, he defended Mr. Trump’s promise to appoint “a real special prosecutor to go after” Mr. Biden. Mr. Vance has proposed sweeping away the civil service and ignoring the Supreme Court if the justices deem these moves illegal. At a moment when the nation is desperate to lower the political temperature, Mr. Vance wrote on Saturday, without evidence, that Biden campaign rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Just as many Americans hold out hope that Mr. Trump, in the wake of the assassination attempt, will look toward the country’s better angels, it’s possible that Mr. Vance will evolve with him, and chart a constructive path.
There is no mistaking, though, that his nomination marks a significant turn in Republican orthodoxy. Just two years ago, Mr. Vance struggled to raise money during his Senate bid because he attacked the GOP establishment. He underperformed Mr. Trump’s 2020 Ohio margin of victory, and his candidacy required the super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to spend tens of millions more dollars than planned to hold the seat.
Mr. McConnell has been a champion of U.S. global leadership and support for Ukraine. In a reflection of how far the party has drifted from the values of Eisenhower, Mr. McConnell was booed loudly on the floor of the GOP convention Monday afternoon when he appeared on behalf of the Kentucky delegation to pledge all its delegates to Mr. Trump. An hour later, the roaring crowd unanimously acclaimed Mr. Vance’s nomination for vice president.
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