Two Trump VPs, Two Visions

Hunter Baker reports that the recent books by Mike Pence and J.D. Vance highlight a shift in the Republican Party's direction and religious outlook. While Pence maintains loyalty to the Reagan era and speaks from an evangelical perspective, Vance represents a younger generation with different economic and religious foundations.

Vance, who previously identified as an atheist after rejecting the evangelicalism of his youth, now approaches economics through the lens of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. This contrasts with the traditional capitalist theories of Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek. Baker notes that Vance and his peers have moved away from the Cold War belief in spreading democracy and prosperity as an inevitable historical progress.