Milwaukee — J. D. Vance was met with raucous cheers and chants of “USA, USA” when he entered the convention hall Monday evening after being announced as Donald Trump’s running mate. When Mitch McConnell dared to announce his home state’s delegates for Trump earlier that day in that same convention hall, he was greeted with boos.
That a freshman senator and sharp-elbowed critic of long-standing party orthodoxy was given a hero’s welcome in Milwaukee, while the longest-serving Senate leader in history was jeered at, says something profound about the future of the GOP.
Since emerging as a Trump-critical interpreter of middle America with his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vance has embraced the former president and emerged as a millennial MAGA champion in the Senate, breaking sharply with the Republican old guard on issues such as aid to Ukraine and entitlement reform.
Vance’s MAGA conversion caught the president’s eye in no small part owing to the efforts of Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., who stood alongside the newly minted vice-presidential candidate in the convention hall on Tuesday afternoon during his media walk-through as Vance got the lay of the land ahead of his primetime speech. The bright-eyed Yale Law School graduate, Marine veteran, venture capitalist, and freshman senator from Ohio was greeted by a giant sea of reporters gathered on the ground below him — all of whom were eager to snap photos of the man who will spend the next four months trying to convince the country to send Trump back to the White House.
Less than two years after helping Vance win his Ohio Senate seat with a coveted endorsement, Trump is hoping that the freshman senator’s compelling personal backstory and Rust Belt roots will help rocket him back to the White House this fall.
Vance’s tough Appalachian upbringing and national-populist worldview will likely be on full display in his Wednesday night address, complete with attacks on the uncaring elites in both parties he often casts as completely out of touch with the working-class Americans he . . .
