Vance and the ‘New Right’ Spark a Policy War in Washington

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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