Let me lead with the lede: J.D. Vance did very well in the debate against Tim Walz on Tuesday night. He seemed to be pursuing a careful strategy aimed at counter-programming Democrat propaganda. Namely, he showed America that the Republican party is not in any way a bunch of wild-eyed true believers, angry Puritans, or enraged “MAGA” extremists. We’re not using The Handmaid’s Tale as a guide to public policy, as the Left constantly claims, while itself treating Brave New World and 1984 as if they were cookbooks.

Vance was calm, collected, and collegial. A little too much for my taste, since the Democrats are no longer the party of ill-considered idealism and airy-fairy daydreams, which you could have fairly said about the likes of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale. Now they’re the party of principalities and powers, who want abortion up through birth, castration for mixed-up schoolkids, bloody open borders, defunded police and felons empowered to vote, pointless foreign wars, and medical fascism. When Vance said that he would “shake hands” with Walz after the debate, I visibly flinched. (The only contact with people like him that seems safe to me is to throw holy water on them from 10 feet away while shouting, “The power of Christ compels you!”)

I wanted more than anything for Vance to reel off a catalogue of every wicked, insane, unpatriotic and inhuman policy the Democrats have embraced. I yearned for him to nail Walz on his stolen valor, his false claims of serving in combat (which included a lie about combat injuries, which he used to evade a drunk-driving arrest). I could almost taste the flopsweat I was sure would ooze out of Walz’s meaty face when Vance asked him why he traveled 30 times to Communist China on a high school teacher’s salary.

And I didn’t get any of that.

Stop Throwing Peanuts at the Screen

And that’s probably a good thing. I’m not the target audience here. Believe it or not, I’m the most liberal person I know. That’s by design. I long ago stopped associating with anyone who didn’t share my most fundamental views about the moral law, our country, and the sanctity of human life. I turned off most Mainstream Media decades ago, and backstabbing Fox News on Election Night 2020. Thanks to the silo effect of social media, I live, like too many Americans, inside an echo chamber.

That’s how it has to be for me to keep my sanity. There are faithful Christians out there whom God has called to engage in dialogue, gently coax the confused, and winsomely reach out. To keep on talking with folks who unironically use jargon like “cisgender” and discuss “systemic racism” without bursting into laughter. But I’m not one of those Christians. God bless them and keep them, because we need them.

And I think last night J.D. Vance, served in that role for conservatives. He took a few courageous stands (for instance on immigration) and on some others waffled in a way that I found frustrating — especially on abortion, gun rights, and the role of the federal government as provider of … everything Americans think they need, from daycare to healthcare to jobs. It would be easy and satisfying to throw peanuts at the screen and denounce Vance for “compromise,” for “selling out,” for “pandering” and sacrificing “core conservative principles.”

The Truths It’s No Longer Safe to Tell

Easy — and useless, and foolish. I believe that J.D. Vance said as much as was actually prudent in defense of those core principles which he shares with the rest of us. No more, and no less. That’s depressing, but it’s a fact. It would have been political malpractice, in such a close race against such evil, unhinged opponents, to do any of the things that would have made people like me jump off the couch and cheer:

• Offer a full-throated defense of unborn life.
• Suggest that the “childcare crisis” is the result of toxic feminism that drives women into the workplace, crushing our birthrate, so we have to repopulate the country with criminals and foreigners recruited from Third World shanties.
• Defend gun rights as the core differentiating principle that makes America exceptional and undergirds every other right we enjoy that other Westerners are losing — from homeschooling to free speech and the free exercise of religion.
• Hold Kamala Harris accountable for encouraging national riots but prosecuting pro-life journalists.
• Explain why Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2020 were accurate, and Mike Pence betrayed not just his party but his country.
• Point out how the only use Democrats can find for white Christian males is to die in stupid overseas conflicts.

Don’t Blame the Candidates. Blame Conservatism, Inc.

There’s a reason political parties don’t nominate hard-hitting political columnists for office — not even that prophetic patriot, the deserving Pat Buchanan. And there are reasons why candidates tack to the center in general elections.

But there’s a deeper, more unsettling reason why Vance, Trump, and the GOP platform are so much less satisfying on a long range of issues than Republicans have been since Ronald Reagan. It’s not the job of candidates or platforms to educate the public, to convince and cajole and inspire our fellow citizens to understand the Common Good and hew to unwavering principles.

That’s the task of political movements. And the conservative movement as it has existed since the end of the Cold War, including the pro-life movement, has failed in all those missions. The sheer extent of its tragic failure can be seen in how few of their priorities a highly educated, conservative candidate such as J.D. Vance thought it was safe to mention in the debate.

The center of political gravity has shifted so far to the left since the 2000 election that Bill Clinton and Al Gore’s positions then would now be labeled as “far right.” That’s the fault of the think tanks, pastors, and media outlets that should have been pushing folks to the right. Instead of doing that, our leaders promoted futile wars in the Middle East; self-gratifying fantasies about “compassionate conservatism” that flooded our cities with millions of unskilled, alien imports, and economic policies aimed at benefiting Wall Street instead of Main Street.

And now we’ll be lucky — indeed, we should call it a miracle — if in five weeks we elect unsatisfying centrists like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance instead of the crackpot elitists who want to suspend our Constitution. Let us indeed fast and pray that we’re granted that half a loaf. It sure beats the fish head soup in the Gulag.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 10 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.