Trump’s pick for vice president is leading an attempted populist GOP makeover
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A decade ago, when Republicans were consumed by cutting spending and repealing Obamacare, JD Vance was a 29-year-old conservative law clerk in Cincinnati who thought they were doing it all wrong.
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“The pre-Trump political alignment in this country is just gone,” said Oren Cass, a longtime friend of Vance’s who founded a think tank in 2020 called American Compass that has become the most influential New Right group on Capitol Hill. “It’s not coming back.”
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Cass and his allies have gained a reputation for channeling Trump-era populism into Republican policy proposals, making him popular with a handful of senators including Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Todd Young (R., Ind.), in addition to Vance, who represents Ohio in the Senate. Cass’s American Compass helped fill a void in the conservative ecosystem, Rubio said, which some Republicans long worried had become dominated by stale ideas.
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The 40-Year-Old Conservative
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A New Republican Future Is Emerging—the Return of Actual Conservatism
JD Vance’s VP nomination could mean a GOP attuned to the needs of everyday Americans.
‘Intellectual Combat’: Inside the Fight to Upend GOP Economics
Politico profile of American Compass and how we are challenging ossified, libertarian dogmas on economics.
