The question matters, because unless Ohio’s Democratic voters turn out in unexpected droves, Vance will become a U.S. senator (if you believe the polls).
So who is he? First of all, he’s a liar. He tweeted on Jan. 6, 2022 (here), exactly one year after the Capitol insurrection, “There are dozens of people who protested on J6 who haven’t even been charged with a crime yet are being mistreated in DC prisons.” CNN debunked that lie here, accurately pointing out that “Every alleged Capitol rioter who is being held in jail to await trial has been charged with a crime.”
But most politicians shade the truth, so what’s the big deal? For our purposes here, let’s assume arguendo that one more lying politician in the Senate isn’t such a big deal. Let’s move on, because there are much bigger problems with Vance.
He’s friends with Peter Thiel, which is a problem, because the South African-born Silicon Valley billionaire (think PayPal and Facebook) is against democracy. Thiel is a major supporter of the campaigns of Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona.
He’s endorsed ideas advanced by Curtis Yarvin, the influential monarchist most people have never heard of (read about him here). That’s a problem, too, a really big one. Let’s look at some of the things Vance has said (preceding link):
“In September 2021, J.D. Vance, a GOP candidate for Senate in Ohio, appeared on a conservative podcast to discuss what is to be done with the United States, and his proposals were dramatic. He urged Donald Trump, should he win another term, to ‘seize the institutions of the left,’ fire ‘every single midlevel bureaucrat’ in the US government, ‘replace them with our people,’ and defy the Supreme Court if it tries to stop him. …
“‘We are in a late republican period,’ Vance told [podcast host] Murphy. ‘If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.’ …
Yarvin has suggested … that a new president should simply say he has concluded Marbury v. Madison … was wrongly decided. He’s also said the new president should declare a state of emergency and say he would view Supreme Court rulings as merely advisory. Would politicians back this? J.D. Vance, in the podcast mentioned above, said part of his advice for Trump in his second term would involve firing vast swaths of federal employees, ‘and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
So far, Vance is fully on board with what Yarvin, the monarchist, wants to do so one person — Trump — wields absolute power over the American people. Yarvin’s plans include federalizing the National Guard and also putting all police under centralized federal control to establish “a centralized police state to back the power grab.” Then shut down the media and academic institutions, because “You can’t continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times.”
Would this be too hard for Vance to swallow? Don’t count on it. He’s ambitious, has proved pliable in the past (he once considered running for office as a Democrat, and disavowed Trump before embracing him), and he’s parroting a lot of this Yarvin guy’s ideas.
If you vote in Ohio, you need to swallow hard, and ask yourself what vision of America’s future you’re willing to vote for. The evidence suggests Vance is something much more sinister than a run-of-the-mill political liar.