MILWAUKEE—Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s VP pick, showed the face of a remade Republican Party at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Wednesday.
“We’re done catering to Wall Street, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll commit to the working man. We’re done importing foreign labor, we’re going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages,” Vance said to an enthusiastic crowd in Milwaukee.
In what commentators have observed is a very different Republican National Convention, a new GOP is on display — with a stripped down platform to match. The agenda is zeroed in on trade, immigration, and curbing foreign intervention. Vance in many ways embodies changing Republican priorities and a new GOP.
The Story
Vance’s working class roots and appeal, hailing from Middletown, Ohio, show a GOP establishment, which has typically served as a brake on taxes, and little more, on notice.
Trump and Vance’s new platform, long on reshoring manufacturing, trade policy favorable to American workers, and enacting surprisingly popular mass deportations of illegal immigrants, and short on controversial social planks, is not the GOP of Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney.
In other words, the GOP is MAGA now.
Minimalist Policy Platform
In advance of the convention, the GOP debuted a stripped-down platform focusing on trade, immigration, reshoring manufacturing, ending the war in Ukraine, and taking on drug cartels.
The brand new 2024 RNC Trump Platform.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) July 8, 2024
Short and sweet.
Trump's Contract with America. pic.twitter.com/9GxX2aOTrU
Vance, with strong grassroots favorability and a compelling, up-by-the-bootstraps story told in his NYT bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, represents a commitment to the Rust Belt and American industrial capacity lost just a generation ago.
American Dynamism and the Tech Sector
Despite his embodiment of America’s hollowed out Rust Belt and left-behind core Americans, Vance has received praise from the tech sector. After law school, Vance worked at several venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, and brings sophisticated tech, crypto, and AI policy chops to the top of the ticket.
So @JDVance1 is pro Crypto and Open Source AI
— Tommy (@Shaughnessy119) July 15, 2024
Promoting both will lead to a Golden Era of technology and finance in 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/B8m0PLQHPx
AI entrepreneur and venture capitalist David Sacks likened Vance’s speech at the RNC to earlier populist strains of the GOP, which faded away for hawkish, interventionist foreign policy, open borders, and free trade, until the rise of Donald Trump.
Trump himself recently earned endorsements from tech leaders Marc Andreesen and Elon Musk, bringing America’s booming tech sector into the tent along with its industrial base, ripe for renewal.
As JD Vance described the factory workers who had lost their jobs because of the policies of Joe Biden and the other Washington Insiders, I was reminded of this part of a speech I heard 32 years ago at another Republican Convention:
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) July 18, 2024
“My friends, these people are our people.…
Ohio Stakes
Fresh, millennial energy and tech-sector appeal aside, the core America to which the Trump-Vance ticket appeals remains front and center.
All eyes are on Gov. Mike DeWine, tasked with filing Vance’s presumed Senate vacancy, should Trump win in November. Whether establishment republicans like DeWine can remain relevant in the face of a remade GOP could well be determined by his choice.
Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who proved the most formidable GOP candidate in recent history in his 2024 primary bid, barring Donald Trump, has said he is open to the job if asked.
Today, Trump currently leads Ohio polls by a strong margin. In the mid-twentieth century, four Ohio cities, Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, and Akron, rounded out the top five wealthiest metros in the country.
Where Americans were the richest in 1949. Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee. (Image via @foxjust.) pic.twitter.com/R7jtDJC70c
— Paul Graham (@paulg) July 19, 2023
Those cities’ prospects today, situated in Ohio’s 42nd worst economy in the nation, stand in stark contrast to the industrial base of yesterday, but remain in the sights of a remade GOP.
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