How JD Vance’s Shocking Inexperience Turned Into an Asset
“JD Vance wasn’t picked as Donald Trump’s running mate because he can deliver Ohio. It’s already in the tank for the GOP. And he wasn’t tapped because he’s the most qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. The entirety of his government experience consists of less than two years in the Senate.
Vance’s ascension is owed to something else entirely. He is the embodiment — and one of the most articulate defenders — of a belief system that has gradually taken hold of the Republican Party, one that prizes cultural and ideological warfare and rewards the warriors who are most effective in taking the fight to non-believers.”
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“Vance has experience where it counts for the Trump era GOP, in the social media trenches and on cable TV hits. His Marine Corps service — Vance is the first post-9/11 veteran on a major-party ticket — insulates him on foreign policy, and offers a measure of credibility to isolationist views that once might have been dismissed as a product of a lack of seasoning.
He projects cool anger, and knows the enemy as well as anyone in the party because he’s lived and circulated among them, as a venture capitalist, a celebrated author and a Yale Law School graduate. He doesn’t deliver his home state so much as send a message to the restive regions that the GOP aspires to keep in its fold — the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
Trump spoke to these aspects of Vance’s background in announcing his pick Monday on social media, ticking off LinkedIn bullet points that individually served as dog whistles to the faithful.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/16/vance-shocking-inexperience-asset-00168816