{"id":156455,"date":"2024-07-16T06:37:16","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T14:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=156455"},"modified":"2024-07-16T06:41:33","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T14:41:33","slug":"the-jd-vance-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=156455","title":{"rendered":"The JD Vance Pick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/x.com\/tracewoodgrains\/status\/1813048184114942285\">Tracing Woodgrains writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n[T]he GOP is looking to make an appeal to anti-woke Silicon Valley or finance types to fill the void left by the Republican Party&#8217;s competency crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, there is tremendous asymmetry between the parties in policy positions. The Democrats have a massive bench of people whose traditional qualifications are through the roof. The Republicans simply don&#8217;t, and historically Trump has been pretty repugnant to what @powerfultakes calls elite human capital. But you need to fill political appointments from somewhere. <\/p>\n<p>The Thiel-adjacent wing is one of the few exceptions here, and it&#8217;s expanding. You&#8217;re seeing endorsements from, and overtures to, Elon Musk, the All-In Podcast guys, and Bill Ackman. Republicans offer a sort of Faustian bargain to ambitious anti-woke secular sorts: make your peace with the evangelicals, pander to social conservatism, and gain sway in a coalition crying out for policy competence. More than a few will take that bargain. People are drawn to power voids.<\/p>\n<p>Vance is of that class. He&#8217;s smart, ambitious, Thiel-aligned, and in tune with the online right. He&#8217;s cynical enough to flip 180 degrees on a dime, and the Trump-populists are desperate enough for competence that they&#8217;ll accept his flip. He knows more than almost anyone about the right&#8217;s human capital problem. If I had to guess, I suspect that whatever he talks about, from day 1 that will be the problem he focuses most on solving.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, his appointment makes me take seriously the possibility that Trump&#8217;s second term will focus seriously on setting a policy foundation for the future versus just being cult-of-personality stuff. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tracing Woodgrains writes: [T]he GOP is looking to make an appeal to anti-woke Silicon Valley or finance types to fill the void left by the Republican Party&#8217;s competency crisis. Right now, there is tremendous asymmetry between the parties in policy &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=156455\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156456,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156455\/revisions\/156456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}