Tomorrow night, Tim Walz will debate JD Vance, fresh off his Saturday appearance in Pennsylvania. Vance took the stage at what the NY Times called “a Town Hall ‘hosted by The Lance Wallnau Show Courage Series.'” Lance Wallnau is an evangelical prosperity preacher from Dallas and a high profile leader in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Participants in the NAR hold “the belief that Christians should influence or even rule society, from politics to media to culture and the economy.” The movement is considered a very strident strain of Christian Nationalism. When I read about Vance’s appearance at a Wallnau event, I thought it seemed odd–but seeming odd appears to be par for Vance’s course.
Recent polling suggests that Walz enjoys stronger support across the midwest. According to the NY Times, polls found: “Mr. Walz was viewed favorably by 44 percent of likely voters in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin and unfavorably by 41 percent. Mr. Vance was viewed favorably by 42 percent of likely voters in those states and unfavorably by 48 percent, the polls found. Both men were chosen in part to appeal to voters in the Midwest.” Even in Vance’s home state of Ohio, 45 percent of likely voters had a favorable view of Mr. Vance, while 47 percent had an unfavorable one. Ouch.
There are likely many reasons midwesterners are cool toward Vance. But as I have watched him struggle to make a case for himself and the Trump ticket, I have come to suspect that Vance is caught in something of a conundrum with evangelical Republican voters. One the one hand, Vance provides important intellectual heft that the ticket needs in a candidate but on the other, he also embodies things they really don’t like. 
On What They Need. It’s shorthand to say that Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade. In 2015-16 Donald Trump campaigned on overturning Roe but what that meant was Trump committed to appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court every chance he got. (There is a fascinating podcast on this topic, concerning Trump’s pact with Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, by The Daily.) While media coverage of the overturning of Roe focused on Trump’s role in appointments, less noted was the increasing Catholicity of the Supreme Court bench. But to establish the conservative supermajority that Trump delivered for his constituents, Trump appointed not one but three Catholic jurists to the bench. (Gorsuch is sometimes credited with being Protestant but hails from Catholic circles).
“Why haven’t there been any evangelicals on the Supreme Court?” asked a March 2022 article in Christianity Today. The article notes the historical dominance of Catholics on the bench and includes a quote from The New Republic, from 2005, which asserted (by way of an answer) that: “Evangelicals didn’t just need Catholic bodies; they needed Catholic minds to supply them with rhetoric that relied more heavily on morality than biblical quotation.” Commenting on 2005’s conservative bench, this New Republic article observed: “When George H.W. Bush appointed Thomas, it’s a good bet that his Catholicism wasn’t foremost on the president’s mind. But the emergence of the Court’s Catholic bloc reflects the reality of social conservatism: Evangelicals supply the political energy, Catholics the intellectual heft.”
If, as the media depicts, evangelicals are most responsible for putting Trump in office, the overturning of Roe required something more– well educated, decorated, legal scholar-Catholics. The end of Roe was an interfaith effort.
This story is writ a little smaller in the Trump-Vance ticket. Vance is better than Trump at giving voice to conservative politics. He’s better at communicating political concepts and promises than is Trump, who remains bombastic and simplistic in his speech– a big beautiful wall, monster immigrants, Haitians “eating dogs and cats”–Trump’s strength is not his turn of political phrasing. In his debate with Harris, candidate Trump stumbled and bloviated: his are the bigger crowds! Asked for an outline of a future policy, Trump suggested that he had “concepts of a plan.” Faced with the same questions about Trump’s policy plans, Vance pivoted quickly and effectively to Trump’s record of delivering a strong economy. Confronted by Dana Bash on the dog and cat-eating mishap, Vance held his rhetorical ground: his role was to amplify the concerns of his constituency, not repress such concerns–as does the media.
“Unlike a lot of candidates who get trained to deliver their talking points over and over and over again, [Vance] actually engages with a question and is able to have an ongoing dialog or battle,” says Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the conservative thinktank Ethics and Public Policy Center, in the Guardian. The article asserts that Vance is “more Trump than Trump” and “an effective Maga messenger.”
If this is true, Trump has given the base something they need: a person able to thoughtfully act as apologist for the angst of Trump’s base– and someone young, with a long career potentially ahead of him.
On What They Want. While I do think Vance is better at rhetoric than Trump, I am not sure that he is the better Maga messenger. It’s no secret that in the month after the Republican National Convention, the shine really seemed to wear off Vance– Walz capitalized on this time by memorably asserting Vance to be weird.
While Vance is better spoken and more thoughtful than Trump, ultimately, I think these very strengths are a liability for Vance. His demeanor and address announce him as cerebral and even elite (Vance attended Yale Law). These are qualities that work against one in populist crowd like Trump’s, who prefer plain-speak and common sense.
I’ve written elsewhere about Trump’s style of humor– his cantankerous anti-elite diatribes against the likes of Dr. Fauci and Barack Obama (a Harvard Law grad). Trump’s populist humor appeals to the populist dna in evangelical culture. After he was shot in the ear in a failed assassination attempt, many commentators hoped Trump would emerge with a new tone (conciliatory, transcendent?) and a new message (unity). But instead, Trump offered:
” I was supposed to be nice. They say, something happened to me when I got shot–I became nice–.And when you’re dealing with these people, they’re really dangerous people, you really can’t be too nice. So, if you don’t mind,” Trump bellowed, “I am not going to be nice! Is that okay?’
The crowd roared with laughter.
Other people may have been looking for a chastened, more erudite Trump to emerge after being shot. But what Maga crowds wanted was their favorite comedian, performing his well worn schtick. For Trump to emerge fully recovered and in spiritual tact, he needed to get back to roasting someone.
Taking this cue, Trump went on to berate President Jimmy Carter for being the worst president ever–that is,right up until Biden. It’s this side of Trump, willing to model populist antagonism, to which Trump’s base (including evangelicals) clings.
In showing up to Wallnau’s Town Hall, Vance is signaling he’s willing to reach out to Trump’s most rowdy and activated base. In order to win the debate, he will attempt to use logic and persuasion. Vance will be composed and thoughtful in his answers. He will be tenacious for the ticket and Trump’s vision for America. But he doesn’t know good jokes work and when he tries to be funny, he’s often palpably awkward.
Tomorrow night, we will find out whether Trump’s base can evaluate substance separately from style.
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