Juris Doctorate Vance – the candidate no one but the weirdos at Axios have been waiting for

Axios continues the search the GOP’s next great white hope. This week’s offering is a Yale grad with a law degree, a spine made of room temperature jello who is backed by a billionaire and who got famous by pretending to be one of the common clay of the Midwest. He’s running for U.S. Senate and his bid is

2022’s one race to watch

Until a bigger asshole shows up, anyway.

Why he matters:

He doesn’t, but Axios has to fit everything into this puerile template and they think he matters, so it must be so.

Vance, 36, last week joined a crowded GOP primary field to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman. If Vance won the primary (no sure thing),

Especially since he won’t get one vote for every copy of “Condescending white middle class ass explains poor white people to middle and upper class asses” that was sold. But no one tell him or the geniuses at Axios that, it will be fun watching them find out.

he’d be the favorite to win the seat — and instantly would be talked about as a presidential possibility.

A favorite of people like the weirdos at Axios who apparently have a few “President Vance? Here’s how it could happen” articles in the can.

But what’s the biggest issue on the minds of the white conservative residents of small town Ohio, according to Vance?

Jobs? Health care? Child care? The environment? The Purdue-created opioid addiction epidemic hit Ohio very hard, did that come up? Of course not:

Vance told me in a phone interview from Cincinnati that so-called cancel culture was a big part of conservatives’ conversation as he worked Fourth of July parades over the holiday weekend.

And Mike Allen – veteran reporter and con-founder of Axios – credulously wrote that shit down because to people like Allen talking to Vance is the same as actually talking to the people he claims to speak for. Better actually, because he’s not poor.

“People are terrified that if they speak their minds about what’s going on in the country, they’re going to lose their job,” he said.

No examples of what sort of mind-speaking he means were requested or given.

“‘If I say that I voted for Trump on Facebook, somebody’s going to try to get me fired.”

Better make it illegal to post on Facebook. No wait, make it illegal to READ Facebook posts. Or people can sue … someone?

“You can basically give people the right to sue companies that they’re fired for their political views,” he added. “I think that would benefit a lot of Republican voters in Ohio quite a bit.”

???

Normally I wouldn’t blame a person who didn’t ask Vance to clarify the sounds falling out of his face when they slide into complete and utter gibberish.

UNLESS that person is a reporter, because that’s their fucking job. Allen tells the reader that this ambulatory meatsack’s bid for the U.S. Senate is the one to watch in the next election cycle, hinted at his presidential potential, got his statement on the the big problem identified by Vance’s potential voters … but he couldn’t follow up with a few very straightforward questions when the proposed solution falls off the intelligibility scale.

RawStory interpreted it to mean people would be able to sue the social media companies. While that wouldn’t be the dumbest idea a Republican has ever had, even in the last five minutes, it is more likely he meant employees should be able to sue their employers if they’re fired. It would also have been enlightening to know why Vance sees this as a benefit for Republican voters but not anyone else.

Yes, I know we can guess why, but there’s no way to be certain because either Allen was Toobin during his interview with a vancepire, or certain segments of the political press have gotten hooked on repeating Emperor Tang’s nonsense and watching the traffic counts spike. Perhaps the two activities are indistinguishable.

Of course “I dunno, sue someone maybe” from a Senate hopeful is the weakest of hits compared to what happened when a failed businessman/celebrity/sex fiend shouted deranged nonsense from a podium bearing the seal of the POTUS. So maybe we’ll see reporters like Allen roaming the political landscape like reverse Diogenes, searching for one really craven and horrible politician.

And now, the punchline:

I asked Vance how campaigning differs from a book tour. “It’s different to sell a set of problems than it is to sell a set of solutions,” he said. “In a book, you can just talk about the problems. That’s much easier.”

El. Em. Ay. Oh.

But, talking about problems – the more imaginary and therefore unsolvable the better – is all Republicans do. Maybe this guy really is the GOP’s new star.