Victor Davis Hanson: Vance vs. Rubio

Victor Davis Hanson returns to weigh the balancing act Vice President JD Vance faces in a potential 2028 run in weeding out antisemitism from within the Republican Party without alienating disenfranchised white males who have been misled.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.    

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: On the other side in 2028, if you looked at the polls, Marco Rubio was like 8%, 10%, and JD Vance was overwhelmingly [ahead]. They both speak well. And you saw what Vance did in the debate with [Democrat VP nominee] Tim Walz. You saw what he did 30 or 40 times on weekend news shows.

He just demolished all of these left-wing newscasters. And Rubio did the same thing when he went before the Senate or the House. They’re both good. But Rubio is getting a little bit more traction now, and that, I think, is because there is a perception that JD Vance has ties to not the MAGA base, the ultra MAGA base.

I think he’s going to have articulate this. There’s a large number of white males. We’ve talked about that: a demographic, that they were on the wrong end of affirmative action. They tried to go to universities or college. They were always blamed as toxic masculinity people, or racist or sexist or homophobic. And globalization robbed people in the middle, especially the white demographics.

These  were the demo that died at twice their numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet were pillared.

SAMI WINC: Demonizing them, yeah.

HANSON: You can see why they’re angry. Candace [Owens] takes advantage of that. Nick Fuentes does. Tucker [Carlson] does, and the problem with it is it has a strong component. Anytime you have an angry group, then you have people who say, the Jews did it. The Jews did it. The Jews did it. Israel did it, Israel. And that’s not compatible with most of the Republican party.

And so, at some key point. Vance has already come out and attacked Nick Fuentes and said, you can eat S … very vulgar. By the way, I don’t understand this on both parties. I don’t understand why you say SHI word or FU if you’re the mayor. I don’t like it. The mainstreaming of vulgarity.

I know we live in a vulgar age, but when Vance said that Fuentes could eat SHI. He was attacking him because he attacked his wife. But he’s going have to do more of that. He didn’t attack the Groypers because nobody knows how large that constituency is. Nobody knows if they really like Fuentes.

They do like people who say you’re on the short end of the stick. You don’t get affirmative action. There’s no programs for you from the federal government. You’re the guys that they always ask to go and got awful places like Helmand Province or Fallujah. You’re the guys that do the dirty work, clean stuff. You build, and you never get any credit. Your crime rate’s below other groups.

So that is a disaffected demographic, and he’s going to have to find a way to excise the antisemitic portion of the leadership that appeals to that group while keeping that group in the fold.

Rubio, on the other hand, just very quickly, he’s done fantastic. I mean, China’s pulling out of Panama. He went down there after Trump did the Art of the Deal fireworks. He went down there and actually hammered out the details to get them out of the entry and exit points. At least they’re, they’re starting to get out.

And Panama, he was very crucial in the Venezuela thing. I think he’ll be very crucial in Cuba. Something’s going happen in Cuba. They don’t have any fuel. They don’t have any money.

And he’s very calm when he goes before the Senate and the House. As I said earlier, it’s a tutorial on how to deal with these pathetic egos on the Democrat side.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you get the sense that Rubio … and then there’s the electoral consequences.

I’ll have to look at my history, but I don’t know of a case offhand where a sitting vice president, under one president has come back to have another term under another president. So, when Trump says, as vice president, yeah, we’ve got two great people, Vance and Rubio. He never says it, but the subtext is that Vance would be the top of the ticket and Rubio would be the bottom.

This antisemitic Israel hard right stuff is not solved. The Republicans have to find a way of solving it without alienating people who have been misled, and blaming them. When I say misled, I mean if anybody buys into the idea that the Jews are responsible for nowadays, they’re crazy.

I think maybe part of it’s, they say, “Well, Jewish people are 75% Democrat.” That’s changing. And what you want to do is ensure that nobody on the Right is antisemitic because we know the Left is. That’s the whole essence of the pro-Palestinian radical “Israel’s colonial settlers,” all that stuff that we see on campuses.

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