Having called Trump an ‘idiot’ and a potential ‘American Hitler’, the Republican senator now fawns over him

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People think they know Vance, because they know his narrative: growing up in poverty in Appalachia and making it to Yale Law School and Silicon Valley, only to then turn into political champion of blue-collar folks. Josh Hawley et tutti quanti might have more impressive credentials (Yale and Stanford), but only Vance has spawned a Netflix series. Why opt for a cold rightwing technocrat when you can have the rock star of “national conservatism”?

Vance has perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days: trolling the liberals. Mobilizing voters is less about programs, let alone a real legislative record (Vance has none; his initiatives like making English the official language of the US are just virtue signaling for conservative culture warriors). Rather, it’s to generate political energy by deepening people’s sense of shared victimhood.

The point for the rightist trolls is not that Democrats have all the wrong goals, but that they are hypocrites who say one thing and do another. Vance faults Trump’s opponents for pontificating about the rule of law, but in practice only caring about power – an update of the “limousine liberal” slogan for an age of rightwing autocracy.