The Republican primary for Ohio’s open United States Senate seat is a must-watch electoral event for national populists and liberty conservatives.
On one hand there’s Rand Paul-endorsed Mike Gibbons, who is a staunch supporter of free markets and economic liberty. On the other hand, JD Vance offers a national populist alternative who is running on an immigration patriot and restrained foreign policy platform.
Vance has been one of the biggest proponents of completely dismantling the administrative state. In a recent Vanity Fair piece, Vance laid out his vision for the populist Right:
I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left, and turn them against the left. We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.
“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” Vance added. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
“And when the courts stop you,” Vance stressed, “stand before the country, and say—” he alluded to former President Andrew Jackson’s quote directed to Chief Justice John Marshall at the time—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.” . . .
“We are in a late republican period,” Vance declared. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”
Vance is correct in noting that the US is in a post-constitutional phase in its history. This will require strong political leaders to step up and thoroughly punish Deep State actors who work against the American people. One can acknowledge the flaws of democracy but also recognize that an unaccountable bureaucratic state is much worse. Vance is a candidate who gets the big picture issues of our time.
For that reason, liberty conservatives should give him a look. The administrative state has to be downsized and JD Vance is one of the select candidates who is up to the task of taking on the bureaucratic monstrosity that is a blight on the US body politic.
