Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance speaks during a vice presidential debate in New York, on Oct. 1.Matt Rourke/The Associated Press
On the vice-presidential debate stage in New York City on Tuesday evening, J.D. Vance advocated for American isolationism, defended the right of states to cut off access to abortion and blamed immigrants for the country’s economic woes.
It was a message that his running mate, Donald Trump, has frequently delivered peppered with angry resentment and falsehoods.
But Mr. Vance did it in the murmuring tones of understanding and compassion, expressing agreement with his rival, Tim Walz, and wincing when Mr. Walz recounted his son’s brush with a shooting near a community centre.
The grievance and nativism that brought Mr. Trump to the White House emerge from a long tradition of “America First” politics.
But Mr. Vance, on the hustings and now on the debate stage, is showing that a new generation of Republicans is discovering ways to more effectively communicate that message – even as parts of the country grow more receptive to hearing it.
For some conservatives, the debate was a moment of reassurance and a glimpse into a possible future for a party convulsed by its remaking in the image of Mr. Trump.
“Quite frankly, I would be comfortable with J.D. Vance as president of the United States, given the way he performed last night,” said Jon Gilmore, an Arkansas political consultant who has worked closely with Asa Hutchinson, that state’s former governor, who sought the Republican presidential nomination this year.
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Mr. Gilmore has likened Mr. Trump to a “carnival barker.” Mr. Vance, however, exuded a calm on Tuesday that promised a steadier presence in Republican leadership, Mr. Gilmore said. It “makes me more comfortable to vote for former president Donald Trump,” he added.
Mr. Vance has courted controversy. He promoted a baseless claim that Haitians in Ohio are eating pets, suggested women should give birth even when a pregnancy – such as from rape or incest – is societally “inconvenient,” and called powerful Democratic leaders “a bunch of childless cat ladies.”
But on Tuesday, on what was likely the biggest stage of his career, with a combined television audience estimated at 38.9 million people, Mr. Vance sought to be co-operative rather than combative. On gun violence, he said, “Governor Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this.” On immigration, he said to Mr. Walz: “I think you want to solve this problem” – although, he added, “I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”
It amounted to a “master class, a showing of just what the new right can stand for, how it can connect with people and how it can actually rise to the occasion,” said Duncan Braid, the coalition director for American Compass, a conservative think tank.
Mr. Trump is 78. But Mr. Vance is 40, a member of a different generation of conservatives who are upending the way right-leaning politics is done in the U.S. They are abandoning the fealty to low taxes and free trade that marked what they now dismiss as the “Zombie Reagan” approach.
Mr. Trump “has been right all along on a lot of these issues,” Mr. Braid said. In more cogently defending that approach, Mr. Vance, he said, proved wrong those who “have been thinking that maybe once Trump exits the scene, this will all die down we’ll go back to just cutting taxes and outsourcing things to China.”
But Mr. Vance’s softer approach poses inherent risks to the U.S., warned Jeff Greenfield, a political commentator and author.
“Trump is the most singularly unfit, unqualified candidate to be president in American history. So anything that makes it more possible for him to return to power, in my view, is dangerous,” Mr. Greenfield said.
Mr. Trump remains deeply out of step with those who hold the most respected views on the economy. In July, 16 Nobel-winning economists signed a letter called Mr. Trump “fiscally irresponsible” and warning that “the vagaries of his actions and policies threaten this stability and the U.S.’s standing in the world.”
The former president has often responded to critics with hubris, saying in 2016: “Nobody knows more about trade than me.”
Mr. Vance offered a more conciliatory approach, rejecting economists as well-educated but lacking sense. They “were wrong about the idea that if we made America less self-reliant, less productive in our own nation, that it would somehow make us better off,” he said at the debate.
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Addressing the country’s economic ailments won’t happen, he said, “by listening to experts. We’re going to stop it by listening to common-sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.”
His performance was celebrated by the Trump campaign, which said in a news release, “JD Vance Absolutely Torches Tim Walz In VP Debate.”
Viewers were less enthusiastic. An instant poll conducted by CNN found that Mr. Walz saw a greater boost to his favourability, and is seen as better qualified to be president. Those polled, however, said Mr. Vance outperformed in defending his running mate. In a similar survey by CBS, likely voters declared the debate effectively a tie – with a slight edge to Mr. Vance – while Politico found that the Democratic candidate earned better reviews among independents.
Some took note of Mr. Vance’s refusal to answer a question about whether he accepts Mr. Trump’s loss in the last election. Mr. Trump has continued to deny that loss, and to claim baselessly that the U.S. electoral system is rigged against him.
Mr. Vance’s non-answer was an indication that he, for all his skill in filing the harder edges from his image, remains beholden to some of the most jarring aspects of Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
He is “normalizing Trump,” said Mr. Greenfield. But “there’s no way to put lipstick on that pig if you’re Vance. There just isn’t. You’re bound up with Trump’s fantasy that millions of illegal aliens were parachuted in, and that’s why he lost.”