Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, Mark will be here for our midweek Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~Donald J Trump, hot off Biden's disastrous debate performance, and then surviving an assassination attempt, and then having his Florida case dismissed, has now named his running mate: Ohio senator J D Vance. Three years ago, when Steyn was hosting Fox News Primetime, Mr Vance appeared on the show on two consecutive nights. On the first evening, Mark devoted his opening monologue to the views of the then senate candidate (if you prefer it in video, you can watch it here):
I'm Mark Steyn. This is Fox News Primetime. The short version of where I'm at is that our civilization is about seven inches from sliding off the cliff and most of America and the west isn't even aware of how close to the edge we are. So I'm interested in guys who can move the meter on that. Not move toward the center, as the political consultants advise, but who can move the center toward them. J D Vance wrote a big bestseller called Hillbilly Elegy, which Ron Howard turned into a movie with big mainstream stars - Glenn Close and Amy Adams. The New Republic sneered that Vance is "the liberal media's favorite white trash-splainer", while The New York Times called Hillbilly Elegy "one of the six best books to help understand Trump's win".
But J D Vance didn't vote for Trump. He voted for the third guy – wossname, can't be bothered looking him up. He didn't identify as conservative, and insofar as he is by profession a venture capitalist with Peter Thiel one assumed he inclined more to the libertarian end of things – Koch Brothers, cheap labor. But the other day he announced that he's running for the Republican nomination for the Senate in Ohio. He's admitted he was wrong on Trump, and has been to Mar-a-Lago to chew over his Senate run with the President. So a lot of people are mad at him right now, not least the Hollywood crowd who resent having been suckered into sticking beloved A-list stars into a story by a MAGA Trump future Republican senator. But then again the NeverTrumpers and the Trumpers are miffed by, respectively, his belated betrayal and belated conversion. And the media are just happy to pile on:
JOY REID: But there's nothing that really exemplifies the undying fealty that Republicans have to their dear leader like J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican Senate candidate and author of Hillbilly Elegy, who CNN caught deleting past tweets critical of Trump.
CHRIS HAYES: And you know, this is -- none of this is surprising, but the sort of ritualistic, almost Stalinist groveling and sort of self-criticism struggles sessions that any Republican have to go through the era of Trump is still remarkable to behold.
TIM MILLER: All of these people, if you look at their Twitter feeds are like their shrines to Donald Trump. It's shameful. I mean, there's -- you know, we are six months now past his attempt to overthrow the election...And that is very much still happening and J D Vance is I think the starkest example of the flip flop, but it's happening across all of these Republican primaries.
Ooooooh! As I said, I'm interested in guys who are trying to move the meter. And J D Vance seems to be doing his bit on that front. Here he is in Newsweek:
Nearly every major business and financial leader in this country is a supporter of the Democratic Party. They love illegal immigration for the simple reason that their livelihoods are subsidized by illegal immigration—while illegal aliens themselves are subsidized by the taxpayer. It's a redistribution scheme from the poor to the rich. More immigration means lower wages for their workers and easier access to servants for their decadent personal lives.
But his immigration critique goes farther than that:
One of the best arguments for immigration restriction is that we're clearly unable to take care of the people already here. Why let in a large number of desperate newcomers when many of our biggest cities look like this?
Indeed. No developed society in the third decade of the twenty-first century needs mass unskilled immigration.
Remember that general who was testifying about critical race theory the other day – Thoroughly Modern Milley? J D Vance puts it in a nutshell:
I personally would like American generals to read less about 'white rage' (whatever that is) and more about 'not losing wars.'
Just so. In Afghanistan we've taken twenty years to lose to goatherds with fertilizer and they're not even waiting until we leave to loot Bagram Air Base for basketballs and boomboxes. And the world's most lavishly funded and useless general staff thinks we need more diversity seminars.
A couple of months back on this very show I interviewed Tucker Carlson, and Tucker talked about demographic replacement and the left went bananas and demanded he be fired, and the milquetoast right went all jelly-spined and curled up in the foetal position. And J D Vance said:
Tucker Carlson is the only powerful figure who consistently challenges elite dogma—on both cultural and economic questions. That is why they try to destroy him.
And one more, from an interview about his conversion to Catholicism:
I think the Republican Party has been too long a partnership between social conservatives and market libertarians, and I don't think social conservatives have benefited too much from that partnership.
The words of J D Vance, Republican Senate candidate, who joins me now:
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