Veteran GOP strategist slams 'first VP candidate to sanction coup-plotting'

18 July 2024

During his acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, July 17, Donald Trump's running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), played up working-class themes that were clearly designed to increase the ticket's appeal in Rust Belt swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Democrats have been attacking the "Hillbilly Elegy" author as a far-right culture warrior who opposes reproductive rights, once said that women should stay in abusive relationships, and holds dangerously isolationist views that would imperil Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to fight a military invasion ordered by Russian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

But not all of the criticism of Vance is coming from Democrats.

In a biting article published by The Atlantic after Vance's acceptance speech, The Lincoln Project's Stuart Stevens — a veteran conservative consultant — laments that Vance's speech was unrecognizable from the Republican Party he spent decades promoting.

"What happened to the Ohio GOP?" Stevens writes. "For generations, it was the epitome of a sane, high-functioning party with a boringly predictable pro-business sentiment that seemed to perfectly fit the state. Today, it has been remade in the image of native son J. D. Vance, the first vice-presidential candidate to sanction coup-plotting against the U.S. government."

Stevens adds, "In a speech to the Republican National Convention tonight that was virtually devoid of policy, he railed against corrupt elites and pledged his fealty to the man he once compared to heroin, suggesting that the American experiment depended on former President Donald Trump's election."

Stevens goes to describe Vance as a major departure from the Ohio Republicans he worked with in the past, including former Gov. John Kasich (when he was a congressman) and former Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

The Never Trump conservative also notes Vance saying that unlike former Vice President Mike Pence, he would not have certified Joe Biden's Electoral College victory the 2020 presidential election.

"The once staunchly midwestern, mainstream Ohio GOP has now given us the first vice-presidential nominee who has pledged not to follow the Constitution if it stands in the way of political victory," Stevens argues. "As historians frequently observe, autocrats are skilled at using the tools and benefits of democracy to end democracy…. If 2024 becomes a turning point in America's slide from democracy to autocracy, the Ohio Republican Party will serve as a case study of how well-intentioned people let the legacy of the American experiment slip through their fingers."

Stuart Stevens' full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

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