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OPINION

JD Vance Is Crushing It As Trump's Running Mate

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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AP Photo/Ben Gray

I have to say that I'm liking JD Vance – in fact, he's killing it. Now, I've always liked the guy. I've met him a couple of times and he's not a stiff. He’s a normal human being, as one would expect from an Ohioan (I am one too, despite my California residence for the last half-century). He doesn't have that weird vibe you get from a lot of politicians, that if they take off their suit they'll disappear. The Democrats may think he's weird, or at least claim he is, but that's only because they are weirdos. JD doesn't think that women can become men, nor does he think that socialism is the answer, nor does he create elaborate reasons for dodging his duty – when duty called, JD Vance, unlike Tim Walz, didn't let it go to voicemail. He’s normal. Like us.

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Ignore the haters. JD Vance is crushing it as Trump's running mate.

I thought Glenn Youngkin had some advantages over him as far as bringing in regular folks and maybe putting Virginia in play. And while Glenn Youngkin may have been a good advocate, we know JD Vance has been one. Did you see him on the regime media during the last couple weeks? He gets it. He understands how to present himself as a calm, rational, normal person with a mastery of the facts. He also understands what the regime media's job is – not to report the news but to support Democrats and attempt to undermine any arguments the Republicans make. Look what the ridiculous Kristen Welker tried Kamala on the border issue – JD turned her cheesy denial of Kamala's border czar status around on her. It was rhetorical judo, and he got the win.

Nor does JD walk into predictable ambushes. When Welker decided it was important enough to ask him at least two or three questions about cat ladies, JD Vance basically laughed her off. No, he wasn't going to admit he regretted it. He shouldn't regret it. He was absolutely right to lambaste those ridiculous harridans. But he ended up turning it into a big nothing. Welker tried to pin him down, but he wouldn't let her.

Now, there's a theory that you attack a political opponent's strengths, targeting what they put forward as their primary arguments for voting for them. That cheesy French-looking weasel, John Kerry, decided to portray himself as a Vietnam hero, so it was devastating when his own comrades eviscerated him over his inflated war record and his disgraceful betrayal of his fellow troops when he got home following his short tour in 'Nam. That's kind of what they've tried to do with JD Vance. They've tried to hit all his primary attributes. They tried to hit his normality by calling him weird, though the party of men who dress as women and steal luggage probably shouldn't be calling anybody else weird. They hit his military record, but that flopped because he never inflated what he did. He showed up, did his job, and that's it. Walz couldn't even do that, the piece of crap. Then they tried to make him into some sort of demonic lunatic, and his calm, rational, and reasonable demeanor totally undercuts it. If you're going to strike at the king, you better hit, and if you're going to go at someone's strengths, you better take them down or you're just going to remind everybody about his strengths.

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That's what's happening with JD. The guy is smart. He's got a great story – another thing they've tried to attack when they gave him grief because he worked his way into Yale after growing up in poverty. It's unclear whether they didn't know or didn't care that another guy who grew up in poverty and then worked his way into Yale was speaking at the DNC right before they launched this lame attack on JD – Bill Clinton. It's weird that the Democrat Party, which still pretends to be the party of the working man even though it hates working men, would attack somebody for upward mobility based on his hard work and talent.

But when you think about how the Democrat Party is currently constituted, that's not surprising at all. What the Democrat poobahs really want is for people to be born poor and to stay poor and be a permanent underclass at the service of these peasants’ feudal overlords who reside in their compounds in Malibu and New York City. They hate JD Vance because he's uppity. He doesn't know his place. And when the swells were gracious enough to allow him into their Ivy League inner sanctum, he dared refuse to wholeheartedly embrace their pagan/communist ideology. That's unforgivable. They don't just dislike this guy because he's an opponent. They dislike this guy because, like Donald Trump himself, JD Vance is a class traitor. We saw even more of that with the attack on RFK Jr. this week. How mad was the Democrat elite that he stopped being one of them and started being one of us because they had abandoned the principles that made RFK Jr. one of them in the first place?

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Oh, and the new Dem babbling point is that somehow RFK Jr. has replaced JD Vance in the eyes of Trump, and that's just stupid. JD's not going to fall for that kind of cheesy manipulation. He's busy playing his own role, which is complementary to Trump's. And to Trump's great credit, as JD Vance shines – he is shining – Trump isn't offended or resentful. Trump loves it and is out focusing on doing his own things while JD does the things he needs to do.

The debates are going to be interesting. JD Vance has the quiet confidence of someone who has lived through adversity and prevailed. He survived grinding poverty, Marine Corps boot camp, and a deployment to Iraq. He survived at Yale as a normal person. And he's survived being beaten up by the regime media, coming out smiling at the other end of this gauntlet. He can survive a 60-year-old communist blue falcon who looks like he's 75 and on the verge of vapor locking.

What can you say about Walz? The guy suffers from a giant impostor complex based on the fact that he is a giant imposter. He inflates his modest achievements precisely because he knows he's a fake. He knows he's a fraud. That's why he lies about his résumé. Everything on it is a lie. He has to be the head coach when he's just an assistant. He has to have an award from some Nebraska Chamber of Commerce when he doesn't. And he's got to be a command sergeant major (sic) when he most certainly is not.

When they meet, it's going to be glorious because Walz will be scared and angry. JD Vance will be calm and precise and wield the rhetorical scalpel that will cut this communist Chinese puppet to shreds. Walz is terrified that JD Vance will expose him to the world, and you know what? JD Vance is going to expose the real Tim Walz to the world.

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Nobody votes for the vice president, but sometimes they vote against the vice president. JD Vance has been a huge advantage to the Republican ticket. Many people have been complaining, including GOP rivals and rival-aligned people. Some don't like the fact that JD represents a more populist version of Republicanism, But the people that they would prefer to have been totally repudiated. We're not going back to the Busch era. We're not going back to Romney or McCain. JD Vance is the future, and the future is bright.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord! And get his new novel about terrorism in America, The Attack!

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