What the Republican Base Wants

Charlie Sykes: “J.D. Vance made a judgment about what Republican voters wanted in 2022, and (with apologies to Mencken) he gave it to them good and hard. That’s worth considering for a moment.”

“The former Marine, Ivy League law school grad and bestselling author had a strategy… Bankrolled by billionaire Peter Thiel, Vance was willing to drink deeply from the cup of self-humiliation and demagoguery, because that is what Trump demands.”

“But even more important: This is what the GOP voting base wants.”

“For Vance, that meant not only abandoning many of his former principles (including his oft-stated distaste for Trump, whom he once compared to Hitler), but any pretense to a principled or intellectually coherent platform.”