The Republican vice presidential candidate has one goal: to be just like his running mate.
J.D. Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention completed his transformation from Never-Trumper to Trump’s MAGA torch-bearer.
Vance dutifully spent his first five minutes praising the GOP leader sitting in front of him. “Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump,” he told the crowd. “And then look at that photo of him, defiant fist in the air.”
When he turned to policy, he sounded especially Trumpian. Under the Trump-Vance administration, he said, “When we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.” He spoke of preserving “the continuity of this project,” of reopening factories and making products “with the hands of American workers.” He blamed the country’s real estate woes on the “millions of illegal aliens” that Democrats had “flooded” into the United States. Citizens, he said, “had to compete with people who shouldn’t even be here for precious housing.”
The crowd loved it: Through it all, the floor of delegates and thousands of attendees cycled through chants of approval, from “U-S-A!” to “Drill baby drill!” to “Joe must go!”
Many Republicans seem enamored with Vance’s life story: He grew up poor in Middletown, Ohio, joined the Marines, then earned degrees from Ohio State and Yale Law School.
