J.D. Vance Is the Future of the Republican Party

Since his late-stage conversion to the Trumpian faith, Vance has done as much to flesh out his political program as anyone on the political right. On Tuesday, we saw the result: A remarkably extreme future of forced births and the military being deployed on American streets to deport people who have been living here for decades and who, in many instances, are legal citizens who are entitled to be here. This is Donald Trump’s political project, yes. But it is now J.D. Vance’s.

The electoral appeal of Trumpism without Trump is still untested. The available data we have in the form of competitive Senate and House races—and, for that matter, in the form of Vance’s staggeringly bad favorability ratings—suggests any successor will struggle to recreate both the vibe and the coalition that Trump has built. Vance was disciplined on Tuesday but he was also fortunate: Tim Walz started the debate nervously and, perhaps surprised by Vance’s friendly, at time self-effacing demeanor, often let the Ohio Senator off the hook. Still, there was nothing to suggest that Vance is the obvious successor to Trump or, for that matter, a generational talent.

What was clear, however, is that Vance’s approach to politics is not going away any time soon—perhaps not even if Trump and Vance are defeated in November. It will likely not involve wild digressions about crowd sizes, but it will involve calculated lies demonizing immigrants. It will be relentlessly focused on remaking America, politically and culturally, and on punishing anyone deemed to be an enemy of that project: Immigrants, women, liberals. It may not feature raucous rallies and digressions about Hannibal Lecter or electrocuting sharks. But it will be built on relentless lies about its true aims. The future of the GOP is locked in. It will arrive, as Vance did on Tuesday, with a smile.