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The Claremont Institute kicked off its "Golden Age Agenda" in San Diego on Saturday by honoring Vice President JD Vance with its 2025 Statesmanship Award.
The conservative think tank appears to regard Vance, who is far and away the front-runner in the 2028 Republican nomination contest, according to a recent Emerson College Polling survey, as best positioned and dispositioned to carry on President Donald Trump's project of "American renewal and greatness."
Vance provided additional insights into what his leg of the race might look like should he be handed the baton, as well as into the nature of the left.
RELATED: Exclusive: Vance on Mamdani: ‘Who the hell does he think that he is?’
Ahead of the vice president's remarks, however, Ryan Williams, the institute's president, reflected on President Donald Trump's selection of Vance to be his running mate — a decision that was made nearly a year ago and just days after the attempted assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Williams emphasized that Trump's "gutsy pick" broke the mold of conventional Republican vice presidential selections, as the decision appeared to be motivated not by improving the president's chances of winning Ohio nor by reassuring the establishment.
If anything, Vance actually terrified the establishment, as evidenced by various deep-pocketed Republican donors' open denigration of the Appalachian populist and Rupert Murdoch's reported lobbying campaign to dissuade Trump from picking Vance.
Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Williams suggested that Vance was instead chosen because of who he is and what he stands for.
Vance is a "premier advocate" "for a transformative course correction after years of middle American economic stagnation, a bipartisan blindness on the importance of secure borders and sovereignty, and a return to prudence and strategic clarity in foreign policy," said Williams.
What's more, "Vance's story is an American story — a kid rising from tough family circumstances in middle America; serving his country honorably in the Marines and then making his way in law and business; becoming a senator from his home state and then ascending to the vice presidency. This kind of success and political ascent is really only possible in America."
After expressing gratitude for the award as well as to both the institute and his wife, Vice President Vance — fresh off casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate last week to pass the president's "big, beautiful bill" — provided a survey of the political landscape.
Vance noted that rather than learn their lesson after their trouncing at the polls in the 2024 election, the Democrats have embraced the politics that alienated so much of the electorate, as evidenced by Democrats' support for "33-year-old communist" Zohran Mamdani in the New York Democratic primary.
'They hate the people in this room.'
Whereas Trump's victory in 2024 was "rooted in a broad, working- and middle-class coalition, Mamdani's coalition is almost the inverse of that," said Vance.
"If you look at his electoral performance, precinct by precinct, what you see is a left that has completely left behind the broad middle of the United States of America. This is a guy who won high-income and college-educated New Yorkers, and especially ... young, highly educated New Yorkers, but he was weakest among black voters and weakest among those without a college degree. That's an interesting coalition," said the vice president.
RELATED: Vance: Trump’s growth plan ditches cheap labor for real jobs that will fuel American greatness
Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
After pointing out the various contradictions manifest on the left, Vance underscored that the elites-championed coalition of "Islamists, gender studies majors, socially liberal white urbanites, and Big Pharma lobbyists" is not bound together by shared affinities — not even the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or Karl Marx — but by hatred.
"They hate the people in this room. They hate the president of the United States. And most of all, they hate the people who voted for that president of the United States in the last election in November," continued Vance. "This is the animating principle of the American far left."
While careful not to conflate everyday Democrat voters with the American far left, Vance said the label accurately applies to the party's leadership, who are "arsonists" willing to "make common cause with anyone willing to light the match."
'There is something about Western liberalism that seems almost suicidal or at least socially parasitic.'
The vice president further suggested Mamdani is a perfect mascot for the Democratic Party, as he "captures so many of the movement's apparent contradictions in a single human being" and is "not trying to build prosperity. He's trying to tear something down."
After faulting the left for lacking a positive vision for the future, Vance discussed ways of maximizing American prosperity and continuing to usher in the "golden age" promised by Trump on Jan. 20.
The vice president noted that by employing the "stick" that is tariffs and the "carrots" that are lower taxes and fewer regulations, the administration hopes to make it easier to save, invest, build businesses, work dignified jobs, and support a family in the United States.
Vance made abundantly clear that this work under way to bring about American renewal is not another liberal project that treats the U.S. as an economic zone and an "idea" with an infinitely replaceable population.
Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
"We are not just producers and consumers," said Vance. "We are human beings made in the image of God, and we love our home, not just because we earn a living here but because we discover our purpose and our meaning here."
"Every Western society, as I stand here today, has significant demographic and cultural problems. There is something about Western liberalism that seems almost suicidal or at least socially parasitic. It tends to feed off of the healthy host until there's nothing left," continued the vice president.
"They've gotten awfully good at tearing things down, but they haven't gotten good at building back."
'This country is not a contradiction.'
After hammering themes of disorientation, disenchantment, and disaffiliation and emphasizing the importance of social cohesion and satisfying the "obligations that we have to our fellow countrymen," he then identified a number of remedies, many of which the Trump administration is presently pursuing, including defending American sovereignty by securing the border and protecting citizens from "unfair foreign taxes" and "preserving the basic legal privileges of citizenship" like voting or access to state-run benefits programs. He indicated that the government must also avoid entangling Americans "in prolonged, distant wars."
Vance noted further that citizenship in the 21st century not only means respecting American heritage but necessarily building upon it "together as one American family" — to advance "groundbreaking innovations and to leave homes, and libraries, and factories that our descendants will look at someday and feel a sense of awe."
"This country is not a contradiction," he concluded. "It's a nation of countless extraordinary people across many generations. It's a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty, but more importantly, it's our home."
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