J.D. Vance and the new Republican oligarchs
The Ohio senator and his billionaire overlords literally do want to bring back feudalism
Despite Republicans’ absurd claims about being “populist,” the party has long been controlled by business brahmins looking to get even richer via taxpayer dollars. Beginning during the Cold War and for several decades afterwards, the billionaires who called the shots in the party hailed from manufacturing and defense contracting. But Donald Trump’s rise to Republican dominance represented the ascent of a different class of right-wing oligarch that is far more extreme than anti-government zealots like Charles Koch.
Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential nominee has made their triumph obvious. The Ohio senator has long been the personal servant of private spying billionaire Peter Thiel, and he was the overwhelming favorite of crypto grifters like Elon Musk and David Sacks, both of whom heavily lobbied Trump to pick Vance.
Both today’s and yesterday’s Republican overlords have always been interested in growing their hordes, but the new class of oligarchs aren’t just trying to reverse the New Deal, they are trying to unravel democracy itself, which they see as a degenerate system in which the weak oppress the worthy.
No person knows this better than Marc Short, Koch’s former top political adviser who moved on from that job to becoming chief of staff to Trump’s previous running mate, Mike Pence.
“I think what we’re witnessing now is a full-on frontal assault on conservatism,” Short said in remarks to Politico. “You can look at the platform walking away from issues like life and traditional marriage, embracing tariffs across the board, but I feel like yesterday and last night went a step further when you have speakers that are basically saying NATO was at fault for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and referring to job creators as ‘corporate pigs’ and denouncing national Right to Work,” he continued. “That’s an enormous departure from where our party has been.”
Of course, the Republican party has not changed its positions on abortion and marriage rights, it is just adding them to its long-term strategy of using courts to legislate its unpopular views. But Short is definitely correct to note that today’s party has entirely different foreign policy views than the Republican party of years past. Defense contractors and manufacturers need maximally free trade while the new oligarchs embrace ideological views that are best described as feudal.
While Trump lacks the intelligence and attention span to understand his party’s new agenda, Vance certainly knows it. And he’s made clear in his rhetoric and voting record that that despite his populist branding, he has no interest in supporting workers or democracy in general. Besides now regularly pushing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, the Ohioan earned a 0 percent rating from the AFL-CIO and has made it a point to lash out at “bad” unions like flight attendants and food service workers while promoting “good” police unions. He has opposed all major pro-worker legislation during his short political career, including the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that would have made it easier for employees who work with multiple companies to organize.
Vance’s rhetoric is even worse. In public interviews and statements, he has expounded at length about how he believes American democracy is not only destined to end because of its supposed decadence, but that it must be forcibly ended. During a 2021 podcast interview, Vance promoted the work of feudalist writer Curtis Yarvin, who has written copiously about his desire to replace the American government with corporate tyranny. That seems just fine with Vance who seems to see the United States as a corrupt failed state that could be easily and rightfully taken over by a tyrant. James Pogue at Vanity Fair reported:
“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
“And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
“We are in a late republican period,” Vance said later, evoking the common New Right view of America as Rome awaiting its Caesar. “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.”
From the looks of the convention floor and on social media, almost everyone who calls themselves conservative is either very comfortable with it, or so completely ignorant that they don’t care.
