Republicans have nominated a hillbilly for vice president. This, by his own admission.
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance is the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a New York Times bestseller. He is also a United States Marine who graduated from Ohio State University and, later, Yale Law School by way of the GI Bill, using the veteran benefit to ascend from the Rust Belt, where he has said poverty was a birthright, to Silicon Valley, where his financial disclosure forms reveal that he made a small fortune, and from there to the U.S. Senate.
Vance, only 39, has lived the American Dream in a hurry, a life portrayed in a biopic directed by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, no less. Now he writes the next chapter of his life, and American history, as the vanguard of a populist conservatism entirely unconcerned with the niceties of long-established GOP orthodoxy.
He may well be the Republican future, one not entirely welcomed by the old guard. All the same, or perhaps as a result, Vance is a man after Donald Trump’s own heart.
