What to Know About J.D. Vance's Political Views
Vance has no problem reaching across the aisle as needed, but he's ready to push the old conservative guard out.
Published July 15 2024, 5:19 p.m. ET
The week following an assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump found the conservative party at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis. It's there that Donald Trump will be nominated and then confirmed as the 2024 presidential candidate.
He then chooses his running mate. Normally that happens on stage, but former president Trump took to Truth Social to declare Ohio Senator J.D. Vance is his VP pick. Here's what we know about J.D. Vance's political views.
J.D. Vance's political views are aligned with Donald Trump's.
Trump's main focus when choosing his 2024 running mate seems to be finding someone who would fall in line. After former Vice President Mike Pence certified the 2020 election results, Trump turned on him immediately. Despite the fact that Vance said Trump was "unfit for our nation’s highest office," in an op-ed he wrote for The New York Times in 2016, Trump has welcomed him with open arms. This is due largely to the fact that Vance has since seemed to make a 180 when it comes to the former president.
Vance has said he will help enact Project 2025, a policy manifesto created by the Heritage Foundation that clocks in at over 900 pages. Within it are ideas such as overhauling the Department of Justice, getting rid of the Department of Education, and essentially creating an authoritarian government in the United States. While Trump claims to know nothing about this plan, the people who wrote it served in his administration.
As far as abortion goes, Vance once supported a national 15-week ban and said anything after that is uncivil, per the Associated Press. This was during his 2022 Senate run. In 2023, when Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment that ensured access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care, Vance backed off. To get an idea of what Vance is really gunning for, look to convicted criminal Steve Bannon who told Politico, "I’m sure he’ll run for the presidency one day."
Vance himself also said to Politico in March 2024 that, "Trump will, at most, serve [another] four years in the White House. There is a big question about what comes after him." That doesn't sound like support but rather, a long-term plan for him. He refers to himself and a select group of others as the "New Right" and views older conservatives as a form of the liberal elite, calling them the Regime. What he does do differently is reach across the aisle to get things done. At least there's that.
Is J.D. Vance a Christian?
According to the National Catholic Register, Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019. "My views on public policy and what the optimal state should look like are pretty aligned with Catholic social teaching," he told Rod Dreher of The American Conservative.
His love of Catholicism is deeply rooted in its longevity and survival skills. It's safe to say his political views match up with his religious ideals. "The hope of the Christian faith is not rooted in any short-term conquest of the material world, but in the fact that it is true, and over the long term, with various fits and starts, things will work out," said Vance.
