Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) may have been nominated for vice president by acclamation, but not everybody was happy.
Vance’s selection by Donald Trump was only part of the populist opening salvo in Milwaukee.
“To conservatives over the age of 30, the first night of primetime Republican Convention programming sounded like the boilerplate rhetoric they’ve spent their adult lives voting against,” protested National Review's Noah Rothman, who described appeals to blue-collar workers at home and for retrenchment abroad as “a night for progressive Republicanism.”
“Hearing A LOT of alarm today among GOP donors & Reaganite conservative types about J.D. Vance,” the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein reported. “On trade, taxes, unions, antitrust — he’s signaled [a] sharp departure from traditional conservatism, despite venture capitalist roots.”
“Vance it is,” wrote conservative radio talk show host Erick Erickson, getting the lineage of the New Right closer to, er, right. “Reaganites are passing the torch to the Buchananites.”
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