Former Bush adviser says J.D. Vance’s “anti-Trump” behavior in debate was key to his success
United States: An ex-Bush aide said that JD Vance’s “anti-Trump” attitude during Tuesday’s debate was crucial to his victory.
“Mr. Vance prevailed on the night by projecting a very different personality from the one we’ve witnessed during the campaign,” Karl Rove said in a Wall Street Journal essay published on Wednesday. Instead of being a confrontational cultural fighter, he was kind, cheerful, understanding, and amiable. He was the anti-Trump politician, and he was thrilled.”
In what is probably going to be the last debate of the 2024 presidential contest, the Ohio senator squared off against Minnesota governor Tim Walz on Tuesday evening. The potential vice presidents avoided the personal jabs that had energized the presidential discussion a few weeks earlier at the policy-focused meeting. Though Walz gained momentum in the latter part of the more than hour-long debate, voters and commentators have praised Vance as the minor winner.
Known as the “architect” of the former president’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, Karl Rove served as both the George W. Bush administration’s senior advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff. Rove attributed Vance’s victory to his ability to stay focused on the primary themes of his ticket.
“Mr. Vance continually returned to the strongest ground for the Trump campaign: substantive policy on the economy, inflation, and the border,” Rove said. “He undercut Kamala Harris by asking why she hasn’t already implemented the ideas she’s now touting.”
When debating gun control, Rove wrote that Walz “talked too fast, at times was defensive, sometimes looked bewildered and mangled sentences.” The latter referenced Walz’s comment that he “friends with school shooters.”
Although vice presidential debates are seldom a major factor in election outcomes, Rove noted that “in a contest this tight, small events can have big consequences” and went on to name a few more possible “race-shaking” incidents that might affect the Harris campaign.
He brought up Hurricane Helene and the possible backlash from Georgian and North Carolina voters who think the Biden-Harris administration handled the catastrophe or the cleanup improperly.
Biden’s unwillingness to “order workers back to work” and the continuing dockworkers’ strike, which might raise costs only 33 days before the election, could potentially hurt Harris’s campaign, according to Rove.
Comparably, the way the current government has responded to the geopolitical unrest in the Middle East may deter a sizable portion of Michigan’s Arab and Muslim electorate from voting on election day.
“In the campaign’s five remaining weeks, there could be multiple October surprises,” Rove said. “If they touch voters personally, these events are likely to have a bigger effect than Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.”
