With the 2022 elections just 3 weeks away, J. D. Vance is one of the GOP’s highest-profile candidates.
The Ohio venture capitalist, whose book “Hillbilly Elegy” brought him to national prominence, is running for a Senate seat occupied by a retiring Republican. The Democrats have a chance to flip this seat.
Vance and his opponent, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), engaged in a “largely civil, if punchy” debate on Monday, October 18, 2022, until the moderator asked them about “the great replacement theory” (see story here). As NBC News explains,
“The conspiracy theory, which has found a home on the far-right fringes, broadly states that a Jewish-led cabal of liberals is trying to take power by replacing white voters with nonwhites by any means necessary, including immigration and interracial marriage.”
Ryan fired the first shot. He said, “This great replacement theory was the motivator for the shooting in Buffalo, where that shooter had all these great replacement theory writings that J.D. Vance agrees with,” alluding to a racially-motivated mass shooting in May 2022 (details here).
Here’s what happened next: “Vance, who has three children with his Indian American wife, was visibly angry and fired back at Ryan.” He retorted,
“Here’s exactly what happens when the media and people like Tim Ryan accuse me of engaging in great replacement theory. What happens is my own children — my biracial children — get attacked by scumbags online and in person, because you are so desperate for political power that you’ll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of engaging in racism. We are sick of it.”
You can almost sympathize with him, until you read a little further and learn that “Vance has asserted during his campaign that Democrats are pushing liberal immigration policies to ‘replace’ voters and win elections.”
Um, yeah. He brought it up, and having dog-whistled his party’s racist voters, invited the response he got. You can’t eat your cake and have it, too. Vance may feel he’s the victim here, but I’d say he’s the instigator.
Related story: Ryan also slammed Vance for calling Sandy Hook denier Alex Jones a “credible source,” which Vance denied until Ryan produced the tape (read that story here).