July 16, 2024 03:29 PM UTC

Colorado Republicans Bearhug J.D. Vance, Warts And All

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The announcement yesterday by former President Donald Trump of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to be his running mate, replacing former Vice President Mike Pence who was, safe to say, uninterested in another term, was greeted enthusiastically by Colorado Republicans, many of whom simply welcomed the opportunity for someone besides Trump to do the talking from the top of the ticket. As Ernest Luning of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog reports, Colorado GOP chairman Dave Williams sent his ebullient regards from the floor of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the partylike atmosphere squelched out Williams’ troubles back at the ranch:

Leading Colorado Republicans and delegates to the party’s national convention applauded former President Donald Trump’s nomination of Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate Monday, with some lauding the choice of the 39-year-old author as evidence Trump is empowering a new generation of Republicans.

“Sen. JD Vance is a fantastic choice, and we are over to moon that President Donald J. Trump along with Sen. Vance are on a clear path to victory come November, especially as Joe Biden and the Democrats implode and fall apart during the final chapter of this race,” said Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams, the chairman of the state’s 37-member delegation to the Republican National Convention.

Freshman state Rep. Gabe Evans, running in Colorado’s most competitive congressional race, may not have much use for Dave Williams after Williams turned the Colorado GOP as an institution against Evans during the CO-08 primary, but there’s no daylight between the two in their love for J.D. Vance:

Former GOP Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado lost his U.S. Senate seat two years before J.D. Vance won his, but still loved on Vance as if they were more than just eerily similar in appearance:

If the idea of Vance getting all up in “every nook and cranny of the country” makes you a bit uncomfortable, that would be a healthy response to an understanding of Vance’s short record in public office, in which Vance has proven himself to be a full-throated champion of everything Colorado voters have come to despise in modern-day Republican candidates. While running for the Senate in 2022, Vance tried to make an intellectual argument against exceptions in abortion bans for rape and incest victims, claiming these “inconvenient” pregnancies should still be brought to term. Vance’s position on abortion also scrambles the attempt by Republicans to feint to the center on the issue, being proudly and unapologetically in favor of a national abortion ban. Vance is a climate crisis denier who lambasted the Biden administration for not drilling more fossil fuels even as the U.S. set new records for production.

But Vance’s biggest value to Trump, and the reason he got the job even though other candidates would have made the ticket as a whole more competitive, is that Vance readily admits he would have gone along with the “fake electors” plot that Trump’s old veep Mike Pence refused to entertain–the same plot now the subject of criminal prosecutions and disbarment of lawyers responsible, a story known well to Colorado voters:

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors [Pols emphasis] and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” [Vance said]. “That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”

In the end, it’s Vance’s expressed willingness to break the law to keep Trump in power in the exact situation in which Pence refused that makes him most valuable to Trump, and not Vance’s immoderate issue positions–which will have limited appeal beyond voters already in Trump’s camp, and are downright repellent in competitive states. For Trump, Vance, even after years as one of his acerbic critics, offers his personal loyalty over loyalty to the country. In choosing Vance, Trump has proven once again that loyalty is all he cares about.

There may be states where Vance helps Trump, but Colorado is not one of them.