WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON HERE?
GETTING TO KNOW JD VANCE, ON THE RECORD: A PROJECT 25 SYMPATHIZER WITH INTELLECTUAL PRETENTIONS, BUT DEEP DOWN HE’S SHALLOW. AND WHAT’S HIS THING WITH CHILDLESS CAT WOMEN?
James David (aka “JD” with no periods) Vance would not seem to be a natural fit on the GOP ticket with former President Donald J. Trump. The bumper sticker does have a certain symmetry: “TRUMP/VANCE” has the feel like the first two wrong guesses in a game of Beginner WORDLE. There has been plenty of coverage, however, of his past statements disparaging The Donald, during and after Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency.
“‘I’m a Never Trump guy,’ Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016….’I never liked him’….’My god what an idiot,’ he wrote, referring to Trump” in an October 2016 Tweet. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/23/jd-vance-ohio-senate-trump-comments-516865?template_id=OTJIR2CRKUD6&variant_id=OTVPXN5JGTYRX&is_login_link=true
“‘[I]n a July 2016 piece for the Atlantic magazine, Vance compared Trump to ‘cultural heroin,’ a ‘new pain reliever’ that promised easy solutions to the mounting social problems of suffering communities — but that ultimately ‘could not fix what ails them.’ ‘To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution,’ Vance wrote, citing Trump’s promises to bring jobs back by simply punishing offshoring companies or to cure the opioid epidemic by building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. ‘He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.’” https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/07/15/jd-vance-trump-criticism/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/opioid-of-the-masses/489911/
“‘I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,’ Vance wrote in a message to a friend in 2016. ‘How’s that for discouraging?’ https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/kfile-jd-vance-comments-trump/index.html
“[I]n 2017 [Vance] said the then-president was a ‘moral disaster.’ In public, he agreed Trump was a ‘total fraud’ who didn’t care about regular people and called him ‘reprehensible.’ Ibid.
Vance’s own moral principles, however, began to show a certain “flexibility” when he determined to pursue an open Senate seat in his native Ohio in 2022 after the retirement of the traditional conservative GOP Senator Rob Portman.
“‘Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,’ Vance said. ‘And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy. I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.’‘ Vance added that he himself had been criticized for standing up for the former president’s voters and agenda, saying, ‘I think that’s the most important thing, is not what you said five years ago, but whether you’re willing to stand up and take the heat and take the hits for actually defending the interests of the American people.’”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/05/jd-vance-trump-tweets-deleted-498164
Instead of “cultural heroin,” candidate Vance now asserts that Trump was the “greatest president in my lifetime.”
“Vance’s embrace of Trump helped him secure the former president’s endorsement in his U.S. Senate race, and since taking office, Vance has been one of Trump’s most consistent defenders. On cable news and Sunday talk shows, the Yale law grad has shown a knack for smoothing the sharp edges off of Trump’s latest pronouncements without walking back his point. As the Trump campaign works to extend beyond its conservative base, Vance’s skills as a communicator and translator — presenting a more palatable version of the nominee’s message — could help appeal to undecided voters.”
Vance’s conversion of convenience to the Trump cult now unquestionably in control of the Republican Party has turned him into a sort of MAGA-Mini-Me when it comes to the former President’s well-known promises to crack down on immigration, conduct mass deportations, and cut off support for Ukraine’s self-defense against Russia’s relentless attack on its civilians, its territory, and its sovereignty. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov heaped praise on Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate: “‘We can only welcome that because that’s what we need — to stop pumping Ukraine full of weapons, and then the war will end,’ Lavrov said.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/19/trump-vance-far-right-europe/
Vance own words justified Lavrov’s good cheer:
“‘I do not think that it is in America's interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine,’ Vance said during a speech in May, adding ‘we've done more than our fair share.’ Although Vance's isolationist approach to foreign policy has even vexed members of his own party, he has candidly voiced his skepticism since the earliest days of the conflict. ‘I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,’ Vance said in February 2022, amid an explosion of bipartisan support for the country in the immediate aftermath of Russia's invasion….
“In April, Vance broke with Senate Republican leaders to vote against a foreign aid package that included nearly $61 billion for Ukraine, asserting Moscow's threat to global stability had been overstated.' Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler. It doesn't mean he's a good guy, but he has significantly less capability than the German leader did,’ Vance said in a speech on the Senate floor. ‘If Ukraine thinks that it's getting another $60 billion supplemental out of the United States Congress, there's no way,’ he later told reporters.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-vp-pick-vance-opposes-us-aid-ukraine/story?id=112036938
At the same time as he wants to disengage the United States from supporting the war in Ukraine, Vance has argued (as Trump at times has) for using United States military forces to invade Mexico to attack the drug cartels. “‘We need to declare the Mexican drug cartels a terrorist organization because that’s exactly what they are…. It allows our military to go to Mexico, to go on our southern border, and actually do battle with them.’” https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/04/11/assessing-j-d-vances-border-plans/
On the domestic policy front, despite Trump’s avowed plans to radically reduce Biden-era rule-making on business conduct, Vance is no mere clone of Trump in that regard. He has spoken favorably regarding the Federal Trade Commissioner Lena Kahn’s efforts to reign in, discipline, and even break up giant social media platforms and other internet marketplaces based on their supposed misconduct in stifling competition. Those efforts track similar regulatory efforts by European bureaucrats, the type of governmental officials Trump loathes. https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20240716129/we-dont-need-a-republican-bernie-sanders-why-trumps-choice-of-vance-spooks-wall-street
Vance has also joined Democrats in the Senate as a sponsor of legislation to further regulate loose freight railroad safety practices, including dangerous staffing reductions and work rules. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/18/was-jd-vance-ever-a-democrat/74455732007/
In his introductory speech at the Republican National Convention, moreover, he seemed to deliberately separate himself from Trump’s hedge fund friends and funders to side with the working class.
“We're done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We'll commit to the working man.” Vance also placed part of the blame for the rising cost of housing on large financial institutions. “Wall Street barons crashed the economy and American builders went out of business,” Vance said.” https://rollcall.com/2024/07/18/vance-says-republicans-are-done-catering-to-wall-street-puts-financial-policy-in-context-of-social-issues/
Vance grew up in a family that needed government assistance and has supported extending the federal child tax credit vociferously opposed by most of his GOP colleagues. Make no mistake, however, Senator Vance is no closet Democratic Socialist — although has uttered respectful words for Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s criticisms of the banking industry at the expense of working men and women. https://rollcall.com/2024/07/17/gop-vice-presidential-pick-has-diverse-record-on-tax-spending/
The truth is, however, that Senator Vance at bottom is the bearded face of the growing hard “New Right” forces within the GOP, with an agenda tinged with Christian Nationalism and a taste for culture war combat, not toward a coming together in social compromise, but in what Justice Samuel Alito (in an unintended on-the-record interview) has framed as a debate where one side or the other must win outright, and the other must lose altogether. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/us/politics/supreme-court-alito.html
“[Vance]… has staked out a place as a leader of an ascendant wing of highly nationalistic Republicans. This group supports significant restrictions on immigration and champions the traditional nuclear family. They blame universities and Silicon Valley for the rise of ‘woke capital,’ which they define as the trend of multinational corporations taking progressive stances on social issues to distract from practices that hurt American workers.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/opinion/republicans-national-conservatives-policy.html
In this regard, Vance has embraced positions closer to the far Right of the GOP than even Trump will go. Like the Apostle Peter at the firepit, Trump has publicly disavowed knowledge and disowned the authors of now infamous Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” (summarized in previous editions of this Newsletter in November 2023 as well June of this year). His denial came despite the well-known fact that scores of the Project’s contributors were directly associated with the previous Trump Administration. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html
Vance, however, has seemed very comfortable virtually reciting chapter and verse from the Project 25’s extremist playbook. The 2024 traditional GOP Senate candidate from Maryland, former Governor Larry Hogan, summed up Project 25’s self-described “revolutionary” trajectory this way:
“‘[O]n the right, there is no clearer example of the threat to American values than Project 2025. This 900-page proposal from the Heritage Foundation was published last year — with the input of many former Trump administration officials and those with close ties to the former president — to serve as a blueprint for a future administration. To call many of these ideas ‘radical’ is a disservice. In truth, Project 2025 takes many of the principles that have made this nation great and shreds them. Toxic politics on both sides of the aisle are undermining faith in our system of government. But Project 2025 sends this disturbing trend into overdrive, casting aside the checks on presidential power that have protected our democracy for more than 200 years…. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/19/larry-hogan-project-2025-trump-abortion/
Governor Hogan is first and foremost concerned with the effect of the Project’s proposed mass firing of federal civil service workers, with 150,000 of them living in his State. Project 2025 proposes to eliminate civil service protections for most of these workers, instead creating more political appointees chosen by the president. The goal is to remove nonpartisan civil servants, most of whom patriotically do their jobs without fanfare or political agendas, and replace them with loyalists. Republicans who believe this power grab will benefit them in the short term will ultimately regret empowering a Democratic president with this level of control. Ibid.
Vance is on record in favor of such an enhancement of presidential power. He has even suggested that if the Supreme Court ruled against that Project 2025 idea, Trump as President should defy the Justices.
"I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And when the courts – because you will get taken to court – and then when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it….” https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-host-abruptly-ends-interview-jd-vance-supreme-court-remarks-no-no-george
Governor Hogan also cast aspersions on the broader goals and themes of the Project on policy beyond subordination of civil service hiring policy to partisan demands. “Project 2025 also proposes enacting absurd and dangerous policies that must be rejected, including mass deportations, disbanding the Education Department, potentially abolishing the Federal Reserve, and withdrawing the abortion medication mifepristone from the market.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/19/larry-hogan-project-2025-trump-abortion/
Unlike Trump, Senator Vance has been comfortable for quite a while marching in lock step with Project 2025’s demand to end the availability of mifepristone — although he is trying to moderate his tracks lately given Trump’s springtime 2024 allergy to even the mere utterance of the word (it is, of course, a campaign-seasonal allergy).
“Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), newly tapped as the GOP vice-presidential nominee, last year joined an effort to enforce the Comstock Act, the 151-year-old federal law that has become a lightning rod in the nation’s abortion debate.
“The Comstock Act, which bans the mailing of abortion-related materials, has not been invoked for that purpose in about a century. The Biden administration maintains that its provisions are outdated today. But some Republicans have attempted to resurrect the law to limit or effectively ban abortion nationwide, a position that Vance and other lawmakers conveyed to Attorney General Merrick Garland in a January 2023 letter.
“‘We demand that you act swiftly and in accordance with the law, shut down all mail-order abortion operations,’ Vance and about 40 fellow Republican lawmakers wrote. The Republicans called on the Justice Department to potentially prosecute physicians, pharmacists and others ‘who break the Federal mail-order abortion laws,’ citing additional federal laws that apply to criminal conspiracy and money laundering.”
On the broader question of abortion regulation, Vance had been a reliable Christian soldier consistently, up until Trump told his Party to forget about a national ban and leave abortion to the states – whichever regulatory path they choose – period, full stop. In his 2020 campaign for the Senate seat, Vance had pronounced himself “totally fine” with imposing a minimum national standard abortion ban (with the states free to be more strict), but did not specify the baseline gestational point after which abortions should be banned totally in all states. When asked the next year whether abortion restrictions should include exceptions for rape and incest, he said that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” He also termed a pregnancy caused by rape or incest “inconvenient” but not enough to override the supervening higher value of the potential life of the innocent unborn child. Now Vance has in the run-up to his nomination for Vice President conceded that some exceptions to an abortion ban might be allowable to comport with “political reality” if not his sense of morality — after a losing fight against a ballot measure to enshrine reproductive rights into Ohio’s constitution in 2023. Ibid.
Vance seems to know a lot about how to deal with political inconvenience. Notwithstanding his prior support for enforcing of the Comstock Act’s 150 year old ban on mailing abortion pills, Vance recently adopted the Trump line on the July 7 edition of Meet the Press when he expressed his agreement with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling dismissing a case challenging the availability of mifepristone. https://19thnews.org/2024/07/jd-vance-trump-vice-president-pick-views-abortion-lgbtq/
But perhaps he merely agreed with the dismissal because it was based on the plaintiffs lack of standing to sue the FDA, allowing the substantive issue of whether mailing mifepristone should be banned to come before the Court again if and when a lower court rules that state governments have standing to challenge such distribution based on their own virtually total bans on in-state abortion by any means.
To be clear, Project 2025 includes a specific goal to “[f]urther regulate pregnancy and abortion, including by working with Congress to pass a restrictive nationwide abortion law; rescinding regulatory approval of drugs such as mifepristone used in medication abortion, the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the US; and conducting expansive government tracking of every instance of ‘spontaneous’ miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.” Where exactly Vance stands on the question of state tracking of miscarriages and even all pregnancies within their borders is yet to be discerned. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-18/project-2025-does-trump-support-it-his-plan-versus-what-it-says?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=240719&utm_campaign=washington
While we are on the subject of the rights of women, a Vance tweet upon the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and eliminate any constitutional right of access to an abortion is instructive as to his general disposition on the proper place for women in society. “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/style/usha-jd-vance-ohio.html?pgtype=Article&action=click&module=RelatedLinks
Vance elaborated on this theme in remarks on the alleged domination of American culture by those he termed “childless cat ladies” -- apparently including both male and female examples! (Now who’s confused about gender?)
“‘In a July 2021 speech to a conservative think tank and subsequent interview with Fox News, he criticized ‘the childless left,’ saying, ‘Why have we let the Democrat Party become controlled by people who don’t have children?’ On both occasions, Vance explicitly called out [Vice President Kamala] Harris, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Harris has two stepchildren and Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, welcomed twins in September 2021. ‘We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,’ Vance said in a 2021 interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. ‘If we want a healthy ruling class in this country, we should invest more, we should vote more, we should support people who actually have kids, because those are the people who actually have a direct stake in the future of the country,’ Vance added.” https://19thnews.org/2024/07/jd-vance-trump-vice-president-pick-views-abortion-lgbtq/ (Emphasis added.)
Taking this theme to a whole other constitutionally challenging level, Vance advanced the proposition that parents should be afforded the distinct privilege of casting additional votes to their own in the name of each of their children. In the same speech cited above, he blamed the childless left for America’s social and economic problems because they allegedly possess “no physical commitment to the future of this country.” To reduce their voting influence on national policy, he made the following suggestion for literally diluting the heretofore equal rights of voting age citizens who are not currently parents. (As a venture capitalist, Vance apparently learned a thing or two about diluting voting rights of selected shareholders.) “‘Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children….Doesn’t this mean that nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions?’ He answered his own questions with a ‘yes’ after admitting ‘the Atlantic and the Washington Post and all the usual suspects’ would criticize him.” https://www.buzzfeed.cosm/morgansloss1/jd-vance-childless-left-voting-power-parents
Apart from the constitutional problems posed by this absurd suggestion by an allegedly deep thinker, there is the obvious matter of which parent gets to cast the extra voting rights (we might hazard a guess on how Vance might come out on that). There is also a question of which parent gets custody of the voting rights in the event of divorce, and whether a prenuptial agreement could cover that eventuality. But never fear, Senator Vance has a partial solution to that problem as well, straight out of the agenda of the hard Right GOP Christian Nationalists: the end of no-fault divorce, already proposed in the legislatures of four red states – Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. https://www.npr.org/2024/07/07/nx-s1-5026948/conservatives-in-red-states-turn-their-attention-to-ending-no-fault-divorce-laws.
“Ohio Senator J.D. Vance … has made his position clear, saying that no-fault laws allow people to ‘shift spouses like they change their underwear.’ House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana even preached a sermon on the laws in 2016, claiming they had turned the country into a ‘completely amoral society.’ https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-07-17/republicans-are-targeting-no-fault-divorce
The rights of LGBTQ+ persons to live their identities free of government interference are also a favorite target of Senator Vance. Again, his stance is squarely in line with the Project 2025 agenda to create federal preferences and benefits for heterosexual marriages as opposed to marriages of same sex partners. Other Project 2025 plans include limiting sex discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, directing the Department of Justice defend religious freedom rights over the rights of LGBTQ+ people in discrimination cases, banning the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from promoting of the ‘bullying LGBTQ+ agenda,’ and trimming the Health and Human Services Department’s LGBTQ+ equity programs and various policies that would target and discriminate against transgender persons. https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/project-2025-verify/project-2025-gay-marriage-lgbtq-rights-fact-check/536-b60879fd-2f7e-483b-bd54-0873e6c36e20
Vance wants to go even further in the same direction. He introduced the Protect Children's Innocence Act, which sought to ban gender-affirming care, including the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for all minors, making the provision of such care an offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and prevent schools from providing information about those kind of treatments. https://www.context.news/money-power-people/what-is-trump-running-mate-jd-vances-stance-on-lgbtq-rights
“Vance also unsuccessfully introduced the Passport Sanity Act the same year, which sought to prohibit the use of non-binary markers, such as an 'X' instead of an 'F' or 'M', in U.S. passport documents. ‘There are only two genders – passports issued by the United States government should recognise that simple fact,’ Vance said in a statement at the time.….During an interview on Fox News in 2022, he used the word ‘groomer’ to describe those supporting gender-affirming care for minors, and referred to trans issues as "crazy gender theory.’” Ibid.
Trump’s pick for Vice President in his second term froze dozens of ambassador nominations over issues like gender transition care and diversity hiring, making him in the view of State Department officials the single biggest obstacle currently to confirmation of career ambassadors in the Senate, all based on his broadly anti-gay and anti-woke agenda. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/07/19/jd-vance-leaked-memo-state-department/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert
“Armed with a questionnaire on hot-button social issues about gay and lesbian rights, gender transition care and hiring practices related to diversity, equity and inclusion, Vance (R-Ohio) held up for more than a year the nominations of dozens of diplomats assigned to serve in posts across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. A copy of Vance’s questionnaire, obtained by The Washington Post and published here for the first time, asked would-be ambassadors if they would increase the number of ‘gender-neutral bathrooms’ in U.S. embassies, boost resources for ‘gender dysphoria and gender transition care’ and raise the ‘Progress Flag’ during ‘regional Pride celebrations.’
“‘The publics of many of our allies, and those countries we seek to build stronger relationships with, have traditional Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu moral values,’ Vance wrote in the questionnaire he provided to all nominees. ‘If confirmed, how would you explain to them what the United States’ promoting ‘human rights for LGBTQ people’ would look like in their country?’” Ibid.
Senator Vance, not surprisingly, is also an outspoken opponent of what he calls the “woke” practice at elite universities that require applicants for admission or faculty positions to demonstrate in writing their past and ongoing commitments to “Diversity, Equity and inclusion” (DEI) principles. Apparently even Vance’s refined intellect has missed the damning irony of his own effort to impose the same kind of “compelled [but “anti-woke”] speech” on nominees for U.S. diplomatic positions. Surely if, as Vance believes, a publicly funded university cannot constitutionally force applicants to pledge allegiance to its preferred socio-political viewpoint, a publicly funded United States Senator cannot force the publicly funded State Department to compel allegiance to one GOP Senator’s opinion on culture war issues as a condition of employment or career advancement.
In June of this year, Vance co-sponsored legislation called the Dismantle DEI Act that would eliminate all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and funding for federal agencies, contractors, organizations, and educational accreditation agencies that receive federal funding and maintain DEI programs. The …Act would rescind relevant executive orders, terminate Chief Diversity Officers, close DEI offices, end DEI and critical race theory trainings, outlaw mandatory employee DEI pledges, and revoke all DEI funding at the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies. “The legislation would also prevent the awarding of federal contracts to entities that employ DEI practices. Finally, the legislation would prevent federal grant recipients across industries from employing DEI practices and would also prevent educational accreditation agencies from leveraging their accreditation powers to advance and implement DEI policies at educational institutions.”
“‘The DEI agenda is a destructive ideology that breeds hatred and racial division. It has no place in our federal government or anywhere else in our society,’ said Senator Vance. ‘I’m proud to introduce this legislation, which would root out DEI from our federal bureaucracy by eliminating such programs and stripping funding for DEI policies anywhere it exists. Americans’ tax dollars should not be co-opted to spread this radical and divisive ideology – this bill would ensure they are not.’” Ibid.
Like most far Right zealots, JD Vance recognizes the importance to their agenda of capturing control of American educational institutions and government agencies. It must be galling for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — relegated to a five-minute shout-out of a “speech” at the GOP Convention — to witness his anti-woke mantle stolen in the night by a genuine hillbilly. Only in America!
In addition to his embrace of anti-wokeness despite his own government-supported elite education at Ohio State and Yale Law School, Vance has also made the convenient switch from climate change investor as a junior “VC” in San Francisco to a climate change denier as an apprentice “VP” on the Trump ticket. On energy and climate as in so many other policies, Vance now personifies the far Right agenda spelled out in the Project 2025 manifesto, which calls for prioritizing fossil-fuel production and deemphasizing environmental concerns by reducing regulation to encourage exploitation of U.S. oil and gas reserves; repealing the Inflation Reduction Act which offers tax credits and other incentives for the production of electric vehicles and renewable energy; and even downsizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which it described as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/climate/jd-vance-climate-change.html?te=1&nl=dealbook&emc=edit_dk_20240716
It was not always thus with JD.
“In 2020, Vance told a crowd at the Ohio State University that ‘we, of course, have a climate problem in our society.’ He added that using gas as a source of energy ‘isn’t exactly the sort of thing that’s gonna take us to a clean energy future.’ As a venture capital investor, Vance put his money where his mouth was, investing in two microgrid developers and an electric vehicle charging technology startup and leading a fund that invested $10 million in a renewable energy tech company, Heliogen, which says on its website that it’s ‘unlocking the power of sunlight to replace fossil fuels.’ He also sat on the board of AppHarvest, a sustainable agriculture company that was committed to ‘seeking to accelerate a zero-carbon energy future.’”
https://capitalandmain.com/how-j-d-vance-went-from-green-tech-investor-to-climate-change-doubter
But when Vance sought former President Trump’s endorsement for his 2022 bid for the Senate, his positions on climate change went up in smoke. He acknowledged that the climate was changing but said that humans had no role in the changes. “‘It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia,’ Mr. Vance said. Referring to environmentalists, Mr. Vance said, if ‘they think climate change is caused by carbon emissions, then why is their solution to scream about it at the top of their lungs, send a ton of our jobs to China, and then manufacture these ridiculous ugly windmills all over Ohio farms that don’t produce enough electricity to run a cellphone on?’” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/climate/jd-vance-climate-change.html?te=1&nl=dealbook&emc=edit_dk_20240716
Vance is now ready and willing to “frack, baby, frack” in his Ohio backyard, while rejecting and repealing Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act investments in green energy sources and methods, the latest vehicle emission controls, and regulations to reduce the atmospherically harmful methane emissions from power production and industrial sites. He even proposes to convert the federal $7500 tax credit for purchases of EVs into the same amount of subsidy for buyers of new gas-fueled vehicles made in America. The price paid for his climate flip-flop and related career advancement amounts to over $300,000 in campaign contributions (cheap by venture capital standards for a successful “exit” from a now embarrassing early investment in climate truth). Ibid.
In catering to the low-information “know-nothing” crowd in the GOP by falsely claiming that he, the ex-hillbilly intellectual, knows everything on the culture war issues, Senator Vance diminishes only himself. Be warned that he has the chops of a genuine chameleon to diminish America too, if elected to higher office. Lord help us if we have to turn to Trump to “moderate” Vance’s form of “socially acceptable” New Right extremism.