Republican nominee for Vice President J.D. Vance enumerated what he called the “challenge confronting American conservatives” explaining that conservatives have, in his estimation, “lost every major powerful institution in the country.”
Walking that assertion back mildly, Vance quickly says “except for maybe churches, religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they have ever been.”
The Vance admission was so startling that Kamala Harris‘s campaign shared the video of Vance telling the Federalist that conservatives have lost “big business, we’ve lost finance, we’ve lost the culture, we’ve lost the academy.” Big losses across the board, he concedes.
JD Vance endorses Project 2025: “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power… I don’t think there’s a compromise that we’re gonna come with… Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re gonna keep losing” pic.twitter.com/2sVHp4i1ek
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 27, 2024
[NOTE: The caption implies that Vance endorsed the controversial Project 2025, which in this video he does not expressly do.]
Whatever the conservative hold has been on the culture and the academy — beyond Reaganite preppies and God and Man at Yale — and whether it’s been “lost” is a subject for debate, but it is an unambiguously damning indictment when the second most powerful Republican says aloud that his party has “lost” big business and finance.
Those sectors have long represented Republican strongholds while being keys to the “pro-business, fiscally responsible” identity that the Republican Party has successfully cultivated ever since the post-war boom. Vance says those days are over, and that all conservatives like him have left to count on is a dwindling clutch of churchgoers.
But Vance also offers a solution to combat the losses — likely the other reason Harris’s account decided to amplify the interview. Vance says: “if we’re going to actually really effect real change in the country it will require us to completely replace the existing ruling class with another ruling class.”
Speaking of those constituencies he admits conservatives have lost, Vance says frankly: “Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.”