Ohio Sen.-elect J.D. Vance argued Monday that the Republican Party should use, not abuse, Donald Trump and claimed that faulting the former president for the party’s underwhelming performance in the midterm elections does more harm than good.
The Hillbilly Elegy author defeated Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) for an open Senate seat in Ohio on Election Day. Trump was instrumental in Vance’s ascension from writer and venture capitalist to senator despite Vance having once declared himself a “Never Trumper.”
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“Of course, no man is above criticism,” Vance wrote in an op-ed piece in the American Conservative. “The quick turn from gobbling up credit to vomiting blame suggests there is very little analysis at work.”
The 38-year-old political newcomer instead blamed the Republican losses on money.
“Any effort to blame Trump — or (Sen. Mitch) McConnell for that matter — ignores a major structural advantage for Democrats: money,” Vance wrote. “Money is how candidates fund the all-important advertising that reaches swing voters, and it’s how candidates fund turnout operations. And in every marquee national race, Republicans got crushed financially.”
Specifically, Vance took aim at ActBlue, a left-leaning online fundraising organization that accepts and distributes money from individual donors.
“Republican small dollar fundraising efforts are paltry by comparison, and Republican fundraising efforts suffer from high consulting and ‘list building’ fees — where Republicans pay a lot to acquire small-dollar donors,” Vance wrote, adding that Democrats raise “more money from more donors, with lower overhead.”
Vance also blamed low voter turnout and said the GOP should “build a turnout machine, not gripe at the former president.”
“Our party has one major asset, contra conventional wisdom, to rally these voters: President Donald Trump,” he claimed. “Now, more than ever, our party needs President Trump’s leadership to turn these voters out and suffers for his absence from the stage.”
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Vance closed by claiming that even though the former president isn’t perfect, “any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term.”
Trump has faced public attacks from the Republican Party following a lengthy list of midterm losses by candidates he handpicked. Trump was taken to task on social media as well as on television by pundits blaming his polarizing brand of politics for the losses.
