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For non-MAGA conservatives, Donald Trump’s choice of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate Monday was like seeing a long-term relationship end—and for good this time. After a painful breakup, you may entertain the thought that maybe someday you’ll find your way back to each other—maybe not anytime soon, but perhaps sometime down the road. That’s kind of the way anti-Trump conservatives have felt about the Republican Party since the former president’s rise to GOP standard-bearer. But seeing Vance formally join the Trump ticket on Monday was like seeing your ex say “I do” to their new love. Any hope of getting back together is now truly done and dusted.
In many ways, Trump giving the nod to Vance is an extremely predictable pick. Of those floated most often as possible VP selections—North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio were the others—Vance is the most like Trump himself in terms of both style and beliefs. But while unsurprising, this choice ended up being perhaps more consequential than the usual VP pick. That’s because in the less than 48 hours since the attempt on his life, Trump had preached unity, creating some hope, even expectations, that he might use his VP pick as a gesture in the direction of the GOP establishment and, ultimately, a bigger Republican Party tent. Indeed, as late as Monday afternoon, rumors circulated that Trump’s VP choice might be a surprising one—maybe Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, or even former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Either of those choices would have sent a message that Trump perhaps saw room in the Republican Party for more moderate suburban voters and for those who are turned off by the populism that’s a hallmark of the MAGA movement.
But perhaps the unity Trump had in mind was ideological unity, because with the Vance pick, that’s certainly what voters are getting. The two men are extremely aligned [ [link removed] ] on a wide range of domestic and foreign policies. Both have questioned the wisdom of American intervention in the war in Ukraine. Both strongly support the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Both believe in putting tariffs on imported goods with the aim of boosting American manufacturing. Both admire the far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who’s used the power of government to crack down on dissent at universities. And much like Trump, Vance is a darling of “America First” Republicans, addressing both the Conservative Political Action Conference in February and the National Conservatism Conference earlier this month. With such harmony in their preferred policy approaches, there is no doubt where the Republican Party now stands: firmly in noninterventionist, anti-free trade, nationalist soil.
In terms of style, Vance follows in Trump’s firebrand footsteps, to be sure. After Trump’s attempted assassination Saturday, Vance tweeted that President Joe Biden’s campaign rhetoric that “Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs ... led directly [ [link removed] ] to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” The same day, however, Vance also tweeted that Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi was an “absolute scumbag [ [link removed] ]” for introducing legislation in April that would strip convicted felons of Secret Service protection, and in a separate tweet, he called CNN “absolute ghouls [ [link removed] ]” for publishing a misleading headline about the attempted assassination. Pot, meet kettle. Whether you agree or not with Vance’s takes, he’s clearly not turning down the temperature [ [link removed] ] of political rhetoric—and his selection as Trump’s VP sends a message that cooler heads will likely not prevail, nor is it important to today’s GOP establishment that they do.
Trump’s choice of Vance is perhaps the first time he has taken action to set the tone for the Republican Party after he leaves the scene. Trump is undoubtedly a force of nature in the GOP, and his dominating presence at the head of the party has made it less than clear who would be its future leader. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, made his own case earlier this year, but—especially in the wake of the indictments of the former president—trying to be “Trump-lite” just couldn’t compare to the genuine article.
But now, with Trump less encumbered by the views of political advisers than in his previous presidential runs, his pick of Vance establishes a clear successor to the MAGA mantle for the first time—and one that could be important to the party for decades to come. Vance is very young—just 39—infusing youth into a campaign where advanced age has been a hot topic. Vance’s youth sets him up for a long and influential future in public life: Like Vance, Richard Nixon was also a 39-year-old U.S. senator when Dwight Eisenhower tapped him as his running mate in 1952, ultimately ascending to the presidency himself more than 15 years later. Furthermore, Vance can now claim to be anointed by Trump himself as the future leader of the GOP—no small boon in a Republican Party over which Trump has held such sway.
While some close Trump confidants—his own son, Donald Trump Jr., and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson among them—pushed for Vance [ [link removed] ] on the grounds that compared to other picks he’d most likely be loyal to the 45th president, current events may have ultimately ensured his selection. Perhaps Trump felt empowered to pick a more strident VP, given Democrats’ floundering in the wake of Biden’s abysmal debate performance in late June, which the president has been unable to counteract even after prime-time interviews and press conferences meant to reassure voters about his capability to handle the job. Maybe following Saturday’s assassination attempt, Trump sensed the Republican rank and file unifying behind him, and therefore he wanted to spend the political capital he felt he’d earned.
No matter what ultimately drove his decision, Trump had a clear choice to make with his vice-presidential pick this week—and chosen he has. The selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate cements MAGA populism and anti-liberalism as fundamental parts of the Republican platform that will likely persist long after Trump himself is gone from the political scene. For more traditional GOPers that have felt bereft of a political home for some time now, it is less likely than ever that they’ll be able to come back to the party of Ronald Reagan.

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