As various meltdowns by the few remaining anti-Trump Republicans have shown, the GOP is now indisputably an America First, national conservative party.
The torch was passed to a new generation in Milwaukee this week, when Ohio Senator J.D. Vance accepted the Republican Party’s nomination to run alongside former, and most likely future, president Donald J. Trump. At 39, Vance is the first millennial candidate nominated for executive office. That’s significant in itself, but Vance’s nomination also spells the final and long-overdue end of the neoconservative movement.
As various meltdowns by the few remaining anti-Trump Republicans have shown in the days since Vance’s nomination was announced, the GOP is now indisputably an America First, national conservative party led by Trump and carried forward by supporters who share his ideals and objectives. If his primary victories in 2016 surprised a Republican establishment that expected to hold perpetual authority, in 2024 they unfolded nearly as a matter of course. Trump’s opponents fell before an unprecedented juggernaut, with even the best among them barely standing a chance of blocking the former president’s return to leadership of the party and center of national politics.
Grouped hopefully around some of those challengers were yesterday’s men, the neoconservative faction of Republicans. Claiming the mantle of Ronald Reagan’s legacy, this movement sought to combine laissez-faire economics with some strains of social conservatism, and briefly—and disastrously—held sway over policy in the administration of George W.
