I’ve seen the future of the GOP, and I’m not entirely sure it stars JD Vance. When it comes down to it, MAGA is a personality cult whose adherents have continuously forgiven President Donald Trump for his crimes, his betrayals, his failures and his promises unkept. No one — not Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio or any other Republican contender — will engender that kind of blind devotion.
Vance might very well become Trump’s successor on the GOP ticket in 2028, but his speech Thursday at the Republican National Committee’s first-ever midterm convention only served as a reminder that, particularly when juxtaposed with his boss, he’s a charisma-free black hole. Sure, Vance can parrot his boss’ lies and try to slap an intellectual sheen on his gutter bigotry, but even with a devoted MAGA audience that received him warmly, by far the biggest applause Vance appeared to receive during his roughly 41-minute speech was when he heckled a protester being thrown out of the arena. MAGA likes Vance just fine, but he’s a replacement-level player.
What was clear is that if this convention is any indication, the post-Trump GOP will continue to drive racist and violent rhetoric, as well as brazen lies and lawlessness, all cynically cloaked in references to God, family and the rule of law.
Vance demonstrated a slippery politician’s talent for mostly avoiding the elephant in the room — Trump’s failing and interminable Iran war — while conceding that the war is causing profound divisions within the MAGA movement.
Without saying the word “Iran” once, Vance addressed the “young men, many of whom felt inspired by Charlie Kirk, but are unhappy with some of what has happened in the wake of his death.” Vance cited his close friend Kirk as “a great example of how to disagree, but still participate in the work of saving this country.”
Despite presenting himself as staunchly anti-interventionist, while never publicly disagreeing with the administration on the Iran war or any of the other U.S. military incursions since Trump retook power, Vance has worked hard to maintain his toehold with Kirk’s youthful following by reiterating his supposed noninterventionist bona fides.
Vance pleaded: “Charlie hated war. Whether it was Europe or Africa, the Middle East, he didn’t care. He just hated war. … I’m not here to litigate the disagreements between Charlie and some of the people that he disagreed with. But what I’m asking you to do is do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.”
People do crazy things when they’re devoted to a cult of personality — or “god’s caretaker,” as the RNC video put it. Just something to think about for the people who still think Trump should be taken “seriously, not literally.”
Praising what he framed as the successes of the second Trump administration, Vance said that two years ago, “we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous.” Vance appeared to deliberately echo his pal Tucker Carlson’s infamous 2018 monologue, in which the then-Fox News host said immigrants were making America “poorer and dirtier.” (It also pairs with Trump’s Hitleresque comment in 2023, when he claimed immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”)
This convention was positioned as a national get-out-the-vote rally for Republican midterm candidates, but given Trump’s historic levels of unpopularity and few policy successes to brag about — other than his sadistic, often lawless mass deportation campaign — many Republicans wanted nothing to do with “Trumpapalooza.” And for two nights, speaker after speaker presented little in the way of coherent messaging other than “Vote Republican, because Democrats are bloodthirsty radicals.”
This is the party that says the other side is made up of violent “crazies.” This is also the party that has spent the past six years helping Trump perpetuate one of the most consequential frauds in American history — getting tens of millions of people to believe the made-out-of-whole-cloth lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
A video played at the convention that same night began with an image of Trump as a young child, as the narrator intoned: “On June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump.”
Later, during Trump’s speech on the second day of the convention, the president told his supporters that they would “go to hell” if they don’t vote, then demanded they promise to do so. To ensure their pledge was legit, he told them to raise their right hands and repeat after him: “I pledge to the greatest president in history, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it anyway. I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell, like they do.”
When I heard “cheat like hell,” I immediately thought of Trump’s exhortation to the “Stop the Steal” crowd at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, whom he told to “fight like hell.” People do crazy things when they’re devoted to a cult of personality — or “god’s caretaker,” as the RNC video put it. Just something to think about for the people who still think Trump should be taken “seriously, not literally.”
I’ll believe Trump is capable of peacefully relinquishing power when I see it, but I’m fairly confident that whether his party wins or loses in 2028, he’ll be exiting the White House in January 2029.
But his imprint on the GOP, including rank bigotry, the appearance of flagrant corruption and the persistent threat of violence, won’t leave when he does. Whether the nominal successor as leader of the party is Vance, Cruz, Carlson, Rubio or anyone else, they’ll merely be the caretakers to the Trump cult, which seems built to last.
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