Josh Mandel is a man without a coherent philosophical identity. Initially recruited and groomed to be a candidate by neoconservative operatives, Mandel has done a complete reversal and taken to branding himself as one of former President Donald Trump’s most stalwart acolytes in a bid to win Sen. Rob Portman’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.
In case it needs to be said, the neoconservative brand of hawkish, economically elite conservatism is thoroughly antithetical to Trump’s message of working-class populism and dovish, America-first foreign policy. If asked, Trump and someone such as Dick Cheney would probably agree that they could not be more different.
Yet, Mandel managed to flip from one end of the conservative spectrum to the other just as it became electorally convenient to do so.
Mandel bends whichever way the political winds are blowing. He is an ideological chameleon who will adopt whatever rhetoric is necessary to attain power. If the Rockefeller Republicans made a resurgence tomorrow, Mandel would have no problem shedding his populist veneer if it meant he could ride their coattails.
While some people have undergone genuine transformations over the past few years, Mandel is not one of them.
Had Mandel honestly gone through a radical shift in viewpoint, we would expect that to be reflected in the policy positions he articulates. Mandel, however, hardly has any discernible thoughts on the issues. His campaign website doesn’t do much to clarify where he stands. All it has are three boxes that read “pro-Gun,” “pro-God,” and “pro-Trump,” accompanied by what appear to be stock photos. That’s it. That’s all Mandel has to explain why he suddenly became pro-Trump after years of toeing the establishment line.
Ohioans need someone with an actual vision for their state and its people — Mandel is not that guy.
One could surmise that Mandel, lacking any apparent deep-rooted passions or values, wants to be a senator for the sake of being a senator. We don’t need any more people like that on the hill. People concerned chiefly with advancing their own careers and seizing power for themselves are how we got into this mess. Individuals with concrete grievances and ties to the places they would come to represent must populate our nation’s leadership, not phonies such as Mandel.
Ohio is entitled to somebody who can embody common good, blue-collar conservatism, somebody who has been imbued with the essence of the struggles of America’s forgotten men and women, somebody who understands the struggle of the working-class family against a cosmopolitan elite that wants to upend their way of life and heritage as a means to make a quick buck.
Mandel, who once faked an Appalachian accent in an odd ploy to appeal to a crowd of coal miners, provides no such authenticity. The most substantive thing Mandel has done throughout his entire campaign is post cringe-inducing blurbs on Twitter that read like low-quality memes from half a decade ago.
Mandel, despite his appearances, poses a unique danger to the movement Trump commenced in 2016. Should he win the Republican nomination, Mandel will have effectively co-opted a nascent populist uprising in Ohio and replaced it with empty, Facebook-tier platitudes. That cannot be allowed to happen.
