Conservatives know they have arrived when some of the more – shall we say eminent? – Gray Lady scribblers deign to take the time to toss toxic gloop in their direction.

Of course, Victory Girls are shocked SHOCKED to find out that the premiere Democrat public relations organ has decided to loose their poodles on VP nominee Vance. Certainly, having an hour or so before all the let’s all tone down the rhetoric schtick was hustled out of the Rose Garden like one of Hunter’s coke dealers and the coordinated attacks began.

But there is something special, something je ne sais quoi when the NYSlimes takes aim. And no one ever quite does hysterical bombast like Paul Krugman.

J.D. Vance Puts the Con in Conservatism

Oh, wow, Paul. We’re impressed … it’s not like we haven’t heard that tiny bon mot from the portside for decades. Keeping it alive for your grandkids, right?

Trump and Vance have a lot of things, including this, in common: They’re both con men who despise their most avid supporters.

As I recall, there’s some audio tape somewhere of DJ and JD chuckling over “bitter clingers” somewhere. Oh, wait … but back to Pauly:

But in “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance rejected the “cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government.” Instead, he argued, there are lots of small-town white Americans who have nobody to blame but themselves. They’re lazy: “You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than 20 hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.” They’re poorly educated, not because of a lack of opportunity, but because they aren’t motivated: “We don’t study as children, and we don’t make our kids study when we’re parents.”

Imagine the reaction if a liberal Democrat were to say any of that.

After entering politics, however, Vance suddenly decided that the white working class isn’t lazy, it’s a victim of external forces. He became vehement about accusing immigrants of taking jobs that should be going to the native born.

Krugman does the usual Leftwing Slime dance when it comes to heretics. Conservatives/Libertarians are never sincere, secretly hate themselves or their fellow conservatives, unrepentant racists/sexists/homophobes/islamophobes or whatever “ism” the Left sends out on email blast is the new thing to slime The Other into silence. Is Vance a fraud who “suddenly”, not only invented his past, but changed his tune for political grifter reasons? MSNBC’s Rachel Madcow certainly feels she has cracked Vance’s dastardly code.

Rachel Maddow claims Lord of the Rings is a ‘favorite’ for ‘far right’ figures:
“Lord of the Rings is sort of a favorite cosmos for naming things, and cultural references, for a lot of far right figures and alt-right figures both in Europe and the United States.
Mr. Vance when he… pic.twitter.com/hFagDgURNS

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) July 18, 2024

Yep, last I looked, the LoTR movies have made almost $3 BILLION dollars worldwide … every single bit from far-right, white supremacist bros.

Rachel! Dude!

Seriously, though, some people actually get Vance.

(in 2016) He (Vance) recounted the story of a teacher from his hometown who told him she was expected to be a shepherd “to these children, but they’re all raised by wolves.” Vance then editorialized that “those wolves are here—not coming in from Mexico, not prowling the halls of power in Washington or Wall Street—but here in ordinary American communities and families and homes.” Ultimately, this was an anesthetizing message for America’s elites: Don’t worry guys, you aren’t to blame for any of this.

But Trump’s unexpected victory in that year’s election forced many Americans to reexamine their own beliefs about politics and society. J.D. Vance was no exception.

Trump’s first term surprised a lot of people and changed a lot of minds. Why is this considered beyond the pale for Vance?

While serving in the Senate, Vance has unsurprisingly been a staunch social conservative: He is pro-life and an immigration hawk. But with the possible exception of Hawley, he has probably been the GOP senator most willing to work with Democrats to push back against corporate power and support working families. (snip)

This doesn’t mean that Vance is a leftist. He hasn’t supported any Democratic proposals to dramatically increase taxes on the rich or redistribute wealth, and don’t expect him to back Medicare for All. Vance is a Republican populist, not a Democratic socialist. He is concerned with concentrated power and a lack of opportunity among those at the bottom, but he is uncomfortable simply taking from the top and giving to the bottom.

Hillbilly Elegy was published eight years ago. Which means it was, realistically, being written one, two or more years earlier than that. When JD Vance was in in 20s, newly married, no children.

I don’t question Vance’s journey, and changes, from then to now. In fact, I would be highly suspicious if those years after one finally leaves the hothouse of formal education into the real world never changed one jot or tittle. Marriage plus children really puts one’s more philosophical musings on life to the test, too. One of the biggest lessons is finding out that your parents are human beings who, on the whole, were trying their best in not always perfect circumstances. Maturity comes with healthy doses of humility.

JD Vance stands poised to make some real, substantive contributions to our Republic. The more we listen and pay attention to him, not the spitting lizards of Slimestream Media and theirs masters in the Democrat Party, the better off we’ll be. JD’s wife, Usha, is already a target, too. Such is the unAmerican stylings of the Left.

Remember in November.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

featured image original graphic by Darleen Click