I may be JD Vance’s biggest fan. It’s not just that he’s a fellow Ohioan, though that’s important. It’s not just that he overcame adversity to earn the credentials smug libs treasure and then turned it around and owned said libs. It’s not even that he is cool enough to own his memes and is personable in person – in this gig, I meet a lot of politicians, and far too many of them are mindless automatons who are always spewing clichés and bending with the wind. Not him, and definitely not his wife, who is as bright as she is delightful. It’s not like I pal around with the guy; I’ve met him a couple of times, but he is uniquely impressive. He is impressive enough that I forgive him for being a Marine instead of a veteran of the decisive branch of American military power, the United States Army. And he has been doing an incredible job. He can not only articulate the America First case but prosecute it. That’s why he’s the heir apparent to President Trump – he’s the guy who can take America First to the next level. And this leads me to perhaps the most important reason why I’m such a fan – the media and the Democrats have already started fretting that he’s worse than Donald Trump, that he makes President Trump look like one of the George Bushes.
Sign me up. I want JD Vance to be our nominee in 2028.
But it’s because I am such a JD Vance fanboy, such an unabashed supporter, that I want another quality Republican to primary the hell out of him. I want him to have an opponent who takes off the gloves, gets in the ring, and rumbles with bare knuckles, biting, and hair pulling.
I want JD to head into the convention battered and bloody, tired, and tested. It’s not because I dislike him. It’s because I really like him. And because I really like him, I don’t want a coronation. I want armed combat.
There are some good reasons to avoid a Republican primary and go with a coronation in 2028. It’s less expensive, in some ways it’s less risky, and it unites the party earlier. But there are better reasons to make JD Vance earn the crown.
Remember the last presidential candidate who got handed the nomination? If you look at some of the polls, she’s the most likely to be the nominee for the Democrats in 2028. Kamala Harris got the nod not by going out there and winning it but by being handed it, in part by her own machinations, but also, in part, by Joe Biden’s last manifestation of conscious action, where he decided to hang that Chardonnay-swilling millstone around the neck of the party that had just fit him with cement overshoes. She ran against Donald Trump, who had been on the campaign trail, who had won a primary, and who was tan, rested, and ready to rock. She wasn’t. She was a mess. She didn’t have an effective organization, she didn’t have the relationships, and she didn’t have the practice. She didn’t have the killer instinct honed by months of political combat against Democrats. She wanted to take the presidency the same way she took the nomination, by default, hoping it could be just handed to her by virtue of who she was. And she was surprised when she found out that she was losing because of who she was. She was surprised because she hadn’t been out there with real voters for years and had no clue that she was repellent to a wide range of normal people, including people who had voted Democrat forever.
I don’t want the first time JD Vance comes up against someone coming at him with a knife in the 2028 campaign to be after the nomination. The guy is a fighter, as he proved by slapping the show tunes out of the mouth of Tim Walz. But even Mike Tyson trained. He sparred. He threw punches and took them. You need that before you enter a general election campaign. A candidate needs to work out the kinks during the primary – obviously, Tim Walz’s kinks are quite different from JD’s, but you get the point. You need to get up to speed in March, when you’re tussling against another Republican. You can’t wait for September, when you are in the midst of the general election. You need to figure out what your weaknesses are and work on them and figure out what your strengths are and how best to exploit them.
And it’s not just the candidate, but his organization. You can’t win without a functioning team, and teams take time to build. Some people aren’t going to be able to hack the jobs you give them, and you’re going to have to replace them. All of them have learning curves. Their curves need to be learned well before the home stretch. All cylinders need to be firing when you get that nomination because the clock is ticking, and you must be full steam ahead when facing the general election tsunami of shady foreign billionaire dark money and election fraud, as well as the affluent wine women, race hustlers, welfare cheats, and perverted deviants who are the key constituencies of the Democratic Party.
JD’s strengths are Trump’s track record, his story, and his ability to communicate. His press conference in the wake of the shooting of that poet in Minneapolis was masterful. He demonstrated strength, commitment, and willingness to never play the left’s game. That the regime media hates him is the kind of endorsement any Republican could want.
But he does have weaknesses. He’s never been an executive, and sorry, being vice president doesn’t count as being an executive. It barely counts as “being” period, though he has managed to do much more than the usual Veep. He’s open to attack because some of his friends have frankly gone nuts, and his loyalty to people who’ve been loyal to him and his refusal to obey demands that he denounce people – I hate that too; I will choose when and how I address friends and other people I disagree with – have gotten him some negative hits from the right. Some call him an antisemite, which is stupid, but it’s out there and the Democrats – who just discovered Hamas is bad – will hit him on it. He’s got to address that somehow, whether he writes those critics off or reassures them. The Democrats are going to call him a “Nazi” regardless, though they’re going to call everybody a “Nazi.” Still, if in 2028 America is powerful again and the economy is cooking, these weaknesses won’t really matter. He will be the avatar of a golden age, and that is probably a golden ticket to the presidency.
But he still has to get elected, and this is a 50-50 country at the moment. I’d like him to get that primary seasoning, but the question arises of who would challenge the crown prince. After all, everybody is sure that JD is the guy, barring some misfortune that leads to his fall from grace. Anybody risking a race risks exile, because the America First types – being, as they are, the abused women of American politics – are utterly unforgiving of those who fail to meet the MAGA loyalty test. Furthermore, at this point, it looks like a losing battle. The very same things that JD is going to cite to make his case in general, he’s going to cite to make his case in the primary. If the economy is pumping, and America’s enemies are dumping, JD Vance is going to be stumping under the slogan “More of the same, only with fewer tweets about Rosie O’Donnell.” Challengers are always about change; if the Republican general election argument in 2028 is “Don’t Change,” that makes it kind of hard to be a challenger.
That means there can be two kinds of challengers. The first wants to return the party to the rule of the kind of sexually inadequate Bushies whom we long ago repudiated. But hey, if Mike Pence wants to roll the dice, that’s great. Pence isn’t a dumb guy; he’s just an insufferable sissy, Ned Flanders without the edge. He might be able to provide a little pushback to JD, though if JD slaps him, he’ll probably cry. Also, along these lines is Chris Sununu, another moderate/invertebrate. He could probably win in New Hampshire, which is something. Their argument will be, “Sure, America’s enemies fear us, and everybody’s prosperous, but we need to be more sensitive and soft and feminine because reasons, and oh well, I never.” It’s a bad argument, and it won’t get much traction, but it might provide a nice workout for JD as he pummels them into the preferred state of this kind of gooey Republican: submission.
The other kind of challenge would be someone coming from the right. But who could do that? Marjorie Taylor Greene? She’s already at about 47 minutes of her 15 minutes of fame.
The real players probably think this is not their year and will sit it out. Even if Marco Rubio, who has been born again hard after his tragic dalliance with amnesty a decade ago, thought he had a shot this go-round, he’s a key part of this administration, so what’s he going to criticize? Ron DeSantis is a great governor. He might be able to go in arguing that he’s as tough as JD, but that he has extensive executive experience compared to the vice president. I’m not sure how much that’ll matter. And then there’s Ted Cruz. We’ve heard noises that he might think this is his year because he absolutely wants to be president someday. I’ve supported him in the past with money, which is a huge commitment for a guy like me, considering I’m part Scottish. He’s right on policy, though he’s off-putting to a lot of people who confuse politicians with pals. His argument would have to be that he’s going to do what Trump did, but more so. That’s a risky argument because it would allow JD to move to the center of the GOP spectrum, gathering votes from the kind of old-school Republicans who get nervous when people are firm and tough. Yet imagine JD Vance going up against Rubio, DeSantis, and/or Cruz. This would not be iron sharpening iron. This would be diamonds sharpening diamonds. Any of these guys would be an absolute home run as president, and some of them are definitely going to run in the cycles that will follow 2028.
So, who might jump in and challenge JD this time? Who knows? Regardless, right now the race looks like it’s his to lose, and he will take it by default.
The fact is that there’s going to be a huge temptation within JD’s camp to try to clear the field. There are certainly advantages to doing so. Not being challenged in the primary is not necessarily a recipe for defeat; the lack of testing and tempering, however, is a real concern. There are ways to compensate for it, like practicing fighting the regime media as Veep as he has been, but none are as good as a real primary.
He probably won’t get one. It’s not clear that anyone is going to put up a fight, and less clear that any of them could defeat him. He’s just too dominant. In meme terms, think of a beach ball-headed JD Vance with a sword and a loincloth, on a hill made of the skulls of his foes, flexing as Conan the Presumptive Nominee.
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