Author J.D. Vance has been promoted for years by the likes of CNN, the New York Times, and even Hollywood, as his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy was adapted into a movie for the pro-pedo video streaming platform Netflix.
Now, a Super PAC backing Vance is receiving millions of dollars from oligarchs such as tech billionaire Peter Thiel for a possible run for U.S. Senate in Ohio. Vance is promoting a polite and sanitized vision of populism in the Republican Party that is more palatable to the political establishment than Trump’s crude no-holds-barred approach.
There is already a grassroots groundswell that is developing to push Vance as the anti-establishment choice in the GOP U.S. Senate primary in Ohio. Vance has not officially announced yet but it is looking as if it is a formality that he will eventually announce his candidacy at some point.
However, the neoconservative ‘America Last’ Never Trumpers at The Bulwark have pointed out Vance’s history as an ivy league elitist who voted against Donald Trump in 2016.
“Whatever the future of the Republican party will be, the shape-shifting J.D. Vance sheds light on the dynamics of how we got here and where the Republican party is headed,” Mona Charen wrote about Vance’s likely U.S. Senate candidacy.
Charen lauded Vance for his book that blamed white people for all of their problems, nearly completely ignoring the myriad ways the U.S. government and their corporate partners have sold out the country.
“Vance emerged as an authentic voice of the working class—a self-styled “hillbilly” no less—to declare that the problems of many working-class people were largely self-inflicted,” she wrote.
However, Charen and the neocons are no longer infatuated with Vance now that he is attempting to grift off of Trump’s MAGA revolution to get into public office. She makes the point that Vance hated Trump before it became possible to ride his coattails and steal his spotlight.
“I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place,” Vance said in 2016. He would go on to vote for CIA operative Evan McMullin, who supported impeaching Trump based on Russia lies.
Even though Vance hated Trump, he remained aware that he could benefit from Trump’s rise. He reportedly told his agent at the time: “If Trump wins it would be terrible for the country, but good for book sales.” This shows the type of conniving mindset that drives Vance’s political ambitions beyond his national populist veneer.
“So now the brilliant author of Hillbilly Elegy, a man of judgment, nuance, and, one assumed, a moral center, is positioning himself as QAnon-adjacent. Please understand what that tweet conveys. By citing the cases of Jeffrey Epstein and John Weaver, one a convicted abuser of underage girls and the other an accused abuser of teenage boys, he is whitewashing the QAnon conspiracy,” Charen wrote of Vance’s convenient political transformation.
“I’m not sure which is worse: that Vance, who just four years ago lamented the rise of conspiracy theories on the right, is now helping to foment one of the worst, or the fact that the Republican base is so warped that ambitious men feel the need to sink into the sewer in search of political success,” she added.
While some may be enamored with Vance for his rhetoric and his public profile, there are many across political lines who can see through his carefully-crafted image:
Trump supporters need to be wary of pretenders to the throne emerging to nullify the former president’s MAGA revolution. J.D. Vance may be the most dangerous of these rising charlatans of the Right.
