In JD Vance, Donald Trump selects an inheritor

Milwaukee: For nearly nine years, Donald Trump has been the singular face of Republican politics and the undisputed leader of the “Make America Great Again” movement. On Monday, the former president came as close as he may ever come to anointing a successor.

The choice of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate, a politician nearly 40 years his junior, immediately vaults the first-term senator to the forefront of a GOP future that is not so far away.

If elected in November, Trump, 78, can serve only a single term— the 22nd Amendment states that no person shall be elected president more than twice — a rarity for a candidate naming a potential vice president. That short tenure has added extra urgency to the question of what comes next for Trumpism, a movement inextricably tethered to one man who has so thoroughly transformed the Republican Party.

Vance, 39, is the first millennial to make a major presidential ticket, a Marine veteran and a politician who has thoroughly remade himself as a full-throated MAGA enthusiast. In recent months, it was Vance’s aggressive defense of Trumpism and Trump, even on mainstream news outlets, that helped him stand out for the former president as a worthy inheritor.

“Trump is going to hold on to the MAGA baton for as long as he can,” said Chip Saltsman, a longtime Republican strategist. But Vance, he added, is “somebody that’s going to have an inside track, a head start on getting the MAGA baton in four years.”

The changing of the ideological guard was clearly, and at times uncomfortably, apparent on the convention floor Monday. Mentions of Vance’s name earned roars of approval. The face of Sen. Mitch McConnell, an avatar of the pre-Trump GOP, inspired boos when he appeared on the big screens above delegates.

Trump, whose fame soared from hosting the television show “The Apprentice” for more than a decade, has long been leery of anointing anyone a successor. He made his choice of Vance after months of deliberations and less than 48 hours after an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania that has rattled the nation.

“President Trump and I have talked about this a great deal and I feel certain JD feels the same way,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, a close Republican ally of the former president. “What they’re focused on right now is not some sort of long-term vision, it’s about November.”

Still, as Alex Conant, a veteran Republican strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns, put it, “The next presidential race starts in January 2025.”

Jeff Kaufman, chair of the Republican Party in Iowa, where the nominating contest will begin yet again in 2028, hailed Vance as representing “a new generation of Donald Trump policies.”

Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa called the choice “inspired.”

“I’m 41 and JD’s 39, right? So I think about that next generation of Republican leader — I’m inspired by this pick,” Hinson said. “I’m sure he’ll be back in Iowa a lot.”

Any succession plan is far from secured.

As Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, can attest, the balancing act of serving as the No. 2 to Trump is uniquely perilous. Pence spent almost the entirety of his four years as a loyal lieutenant. Yet his decision to certify the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021— as Trump supporters constructed gallows for the vice president outside the Capitol — forever tarnished the Trump-Pence relationship.

Vance, notably, has said he would not have certified the election.

Vance is not viewed as the politically safe pick. He has been serving in public office for just 18 months. He has never been through a presidential run, unlike the other top contenders, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota.

Vance has also embraced some more radical and far-reaching ideas aligned with Trump, including once calling for the firing of “every civil servant in the administrative state” to replace them with “our people.” More recently, in a post on the social platform X, he blamed President Joe Biden and the Democrats for rhetoric that “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Not so long ago, Vance’s acid pen was trained on Trump.

Back in 2016, Vance called him “cultural heroin” and even compared him to Adolf Hitler. After the election, Vance’s bestselling book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was almost required reading for liberals seeking to understand how Democrats had fumbled away an election in which working-class white voters turned out in record numbers to elect Trump.

Now Trump is betting there is no one more devoted than a convert.