GOP VP picks Quayle and Palin were harmless, while JD Vance is poisonous

In recent history, the Republican Party has had epic failures of its vice-presidential nominees. George H.W. Bush’s choice of U.S. Sen. Dan Quayle comes to mind. And of course Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who needs no descriptor. At the time, George W. Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney seemed sensible, but we all know how that turned out.

Donald Trump’s choice, JD Vance, is Quayle and Palin on steroids. When Quayle, the junior senator from Indiana, was chosen, many pundits and critics said his résumé was thin; however, he had 12 years of congressional experience, mostly in the House. JD has two. What would Bush’s contemporaries be saying about that?

Quayle’s nomination stunned some Republicans, who thought he was woefully unprepared to be president, should the situation arise. You may remember that in his infamous debate against the much older and more experienced Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, Quayle tried to compare his experience to John F. Kennedy’s, to which Bentsen famously retorted, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

Vance is so unknown that when the news broke that he was the anointed one, Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra said,“We don’t know him.” I don’t have to tell you that Michigan borders Ohio, so think about that.

Palin said so many stupid things that there’s not enough space to revisit them here. She once called Vermont Sen. and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders a "crazy cat who lives up in the attic." Three years ago, before he was elected to the Senate (Yes, just three years ago), Vance told Tucker Carlson during a Fox interview that the country was being run by “childless cat ladies,” citing New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Vice President Kamala Harris, and oddly, since he’s not a lady, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. We can only assume that the inclusion of Buttigieg was meant as a gay slur.

Besides creating a stir by misspelling “potato,” Quayle became a pop-culture phenom when he took on the lead character Murphy Brown in the ‘90s hit show by the same name. Brown, played by Candice Bergen, decides to have a baby and raise it on her own. Quayle gave a speech where he said that being a single mother was irresponsible and wrong.

But being a single mother is not something that Vance would ever tolerate, because his world is a Project 2025 society. He suggested while he was running for the Senate in 2022 that women in violent relationships shouldn’t necessarily get divorced, saying they should stay married and not “shift spouses like they change their underwear,”

And Vance made Quayle’s views on women look like child's play, literally. Again, while running for the Senate three short years ago, Vance said, “A child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.” He’s alluding to incest or rape, which are just a little inconvenient for JD.

Quayle famously said, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” And Vance knows someone who has lost his mind, once saying about Trump, “My God, what an idiot!”

Now, it’s up for you to decide who is the expert on Hitler. In 2010, Palin once encouraged her followers to read an article that compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, because Obama was supposedly taking away freedoms, or something like that. I didn’t read it, not only because the subject is ridiculous, but because I’d never read anything Palin recommended.

OK, back to Hitler. It’s not Obama who is Hitler to JD (although, I’m sure given his whiplash change of mind, he’d now agree) but his running mate, Trump. “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote to a friend in 2016.

Vance is the author of Hillbilly Elegy, which talks about his family's history in a poverty-ridden Appalachian town. His book included many assumptions that seemed to be off the mar, when describing the poor. For example, he wrote, ‘We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy. ... Thrift is inimical to our being.”

Betsy Radar, who ran in and lost a congressional race in Vance’s Ohio and who grew up poor, took strong issue with what Vance was implying, countering strongly in a Washington Post op-ed. “Thrift was not inimical to our being; it was the very essence of our being,” She succinctly wrote. She added, “With lines like ‘We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs,’ Vance’s sweeping stereotypes are shark bait for conservative policymakers.” In other words, Vance has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to the poor.

Just like Quayle. Consider this gem and head-scratcher from Qualye about the poor: "Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us."

All joking aside —but Quayle wasn’t joking — Vance is 10, no, make that 100 times more dangerous than the simpleton Quayle and the space cadet Palin were. While both Quayle and Palin might have yearned for an America that was rooted in the 1950s, Vance’s society is rooted in dangerous science fiction. He is tied to the hip with the Heritage Foundation, the authors of Project 2025, who were privately rooting for him.

As a Project 2025 acolyte, Vance is also the new face of Trumpism, only a more dangerous one. He is 40 years younger than Trump, and because of that, the future is one of stripping away rights for the marginalized, instigating and promoting anti-LGBTQ+ hate, stripping women of their dignity including a national ban on abortion, siding with Russia and North Korea, usurping election laws, denying minorities the right to vote, sending immigrants and migrants to concentration camps, targeting political rivals, jailing opposition parties and press, and abiding by a lawless Supreme Court.

All of that is just for starters. If Trump and Vance win, democracy will be shut down, and the United States, a beacon of hope for the world over, will become a darkened democracy, replaced by the black light of totalitarianism.

And here’s the worst part of all. Donald Trump could give a rat’s ass about being president. He’s only in it to free himself from convictions for his crimes and to ride on Air Force One. And as the old saying goes, “Nothing good happens in a vacuum of leadership.”

Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin look like hapless fools next to JD Vance, who is out to try to fool us into thinking he’s not so bad by denying culpability for all that he’s espoused. Quayle, in one of his warped quotes once said about his boss, “When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But in public, it's Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.”

But that quote might not be so backwards for Vance, who could possibly be more dangerous than his boss.

John Casey is a senior editor at The Advocate.

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