By Kindler
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that J.D. Vance has risen all the way to the number two spot in the Republican party with miniscule political skills and the likeability of a millipede. Please recall, it was not that long ago – mere months, all ye with short attention spans! – that the man who was advertised as the GOP’s Great White Hope flamed out in similarly spectacular fashion.
Remember Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign? Yeah, well, I’ve tried to block it out too. But Ron, just like J.D., advanced to the pinnacle of Republican politics with hardly anyone having noticed that he had the personality of a brick – and was at least as weird as the couch guy, if not weirder.
This is a pretty odd phenomenon, if you think about it: that folks are becoming top tier leaders in one of our two major political parties while being really lousy at the fundamentals – like, say, having a simple conversation with the employees at a doughnut shop. But I think it’s actually pretty clear what’s going on here.
The political trajectory of unlikeable freaks like Vance and DeSantis – and Good Lord, too many others to name, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Ted Cruz – reflects how the GOP has become an environment that breeds such creatures. It’s a party that no longer rewards those with the normal political skills expected of leaders in a democracy. Rather, the way to succeed in the Republican party is by kissing Donald Trump’s butt more shamelessly and ostentatiously than anyone else. And that is a skill that requires very different personal qualities.
Too many Americans – and maddeningly, so much of the mainstream media – continue to cling to the idea that we are still engaged in a conventional political contest between two essentially normal and equivalent parties, blinding us from seeing so many blatant realities in front of our eyes. In less than a decade, the GOP has degraded from a conventional party into an increasingly authoritarian-leaning cult of personality.
Trump’s iron grip on the Republican base has allowed him to be a kingmaker at all levels of the party, largely wherever he chooses to intervene. In 2022, his endorsees won 91% of GOP primaries – this record inflated by the number of incumbents he supported, but even where he supported challengers, he still won 4 of 10 races. By 2024, he was even more clearly calling the shots in his party, vaulting some candidates to the top of the pack when they might not have won otherwise, such as Ohio Senate nominee Bernie Moreno or Hung Cao, Virginia’s GOP whack-job nominee to lose to our beloved Senator Tim Kaine.
While the evolution of species is driven by natural selection, the de-evolution of Republicans these days is driven by Trumpian selection. In the Darwinian context, we may speak of “survival of the fittest”, but in truth, that refers to whatever is most fit for the environment in which an organism lives – e.g., scales and gills and fins are great stuff if you live in the ocean but won’t make you very “fit” in the middle of the Sahara.
And “fitness” in the Republican party no longer means having a pleasant personality, knowing how to speak to average voters, being articulate or having well-thought-out policy positions. Nope, it means degrading yourself to the maximum extent possible in service to Boss Donald, kissing his pinky ring and demonstrating your fealty to him more effectively than any of your opponents.
For example, recall this icky classic from DeSantis’ 2018 campaign for governor in which he is shown indoctrinating his children into Trumpism, e.g., by teaching them to “build the wall” with blocks. And J.D. Vance unquestionably gained his spot on the presidential ticket by backing all of Trump’s biggest travesties, e.g., dismissing the criminal indictments of Trump as bogus to the point of threatening to hold up all Biden DOJ appointments in retaliation and saying he would have supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The way in which flattery of King Donald makes (or breaks) a Republican’s career today takes us back to another era in history, when power was wielded within the stifling constraints of the royal court and maneuvering within it to gain the ruler’s favor was the key to success.
Hence, to understand Republican behavior today, don’t bother looking to American history, go further back in time to the age of courtiers, whose job was…well, to hang around the court and do whatever the king wants, whether that was to write proclamations, carry out hangings or be the official Fool. Courtiers need the skills to appeal to an audience of one, not the many. So, you can understand how Vance ascended to his role without the kind of background, skills, personality or experience we rightly expect of our leaders.
The weaknesses of a system that elevates people based on how willing and able they are to flatter the top guy have been obvious for centuries. They were, in fact, the theme of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, King Lear. The old monarch Lear is ready to divide up his kingdom among his three daughters and asks them to tell him how much they love him in order to earn their share.
When his one honest daughter Cordelia refuses to play the game (“I cannot heave/My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty/According to my bond; no more nor less.”), he goes into a fury and cuts her off from her inheritance, dividing his kingdom between his two sneaky, underhanded but ingratiating daughters, Goneril and Regan.
And needless to say, he learns in the end that he can’t trust them any farther than he can throw them – too late! Because flattery is primarily the skill of phonies looking to climb the social ladder as quickly as possible, based not on integrity or socially useful skills but on skullduggery.
That is how we end up with a J.D. Vance poised to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, standing behind a foolish 78-year-old contemporary King Lear who survives on burgers and Diet Coke and could shuffle off this mortal coil any day now.
The good news is that the defects of the ridiculous Republican royal court approach are so obvious for those with eyes to see that we have the opportunity over the next two months to prevent Trump and Vance from taking us back a few centuries. King Lear may have ended up a tragedy but we still have plenty of time to write a happy ending to this story.
Luckily, the cold-blooded weirdness of the likes of Donald and J.D. are so obvious that even our non-political friends, family and neighbors can see it if we make sure it’s in front of their faces. It’s the inhumanity, stupid!
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