Dakota Beacon

I struggled over this piece.  On one hand, I hate to bring things down, to draw attention to the failure of a Republican candidate, but on the other, there are too many points left untouched by JD Vance in last night’s debate.

Maybe you watched the Vice Presidential Debate.  I wish I hadn’t.  Despite the attempts on the part of various conservative talking heads like Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro, JD Vance really came off as a total milquetoast.  Sorry.  

Why do I conclude thusly?  Well, for all of the missed opportunities.  Walz brought up the idea that Trump was somehow colluding with Russia, Vance sat there like the Great Pumpkin and let it go that Walz has some very scary relations with China.  Not to mention the fact that Walz was in accord with the Tiananmen Square massacre to the extent that he chose the date for his wedding.  When he admitted he was in China during the massacre and said he had learned a lot about governance thereby, one might well have commented that driving tanks over people peacefully protesting is indeed educational.  He has over the years favored Chinese businesses where American businesses have suffered.  Walz attempted to preempt  questions about his relationship with the Chinese by explaining that he took a high school athletic team over on a “cultural” tour.  Had I been in Vance’s shoes, I might have asked why.  Why is it a benefit to either Minnesota or to these young high school kids that they go to China?  What did they learn?  Did they learn about China’s state-sanctioned human organ harvesting?  About slave labor camps?  About the persecution of Christians and Muslims?  Did they learn anything worthwhile about China’s social credit score system - it’s invisible leash on every man, woman and child born in China?  Did they perchance learn that the CCP also has agents working within the United States?  Vance might have reminded viewers that currently Walz is under investigation for his CCP ties by the Committee on Oversight and Accountability in the  House of Representatives.

Vance let Walz get away with his attack on the First Amendment - where Walz expressed outrage that “misinformation” and “hate speech” could be shared, why didn’t Vance advance the argument of the Founders - that unpopular speech was exactly what the First Amendment was designed to defend?  Expressing doubt as to the actual vote count in an election is NOT the same as yelling “Fire!” in a crowded room.  Not at all.  Our right to question our leaders and our elections is sacred.  We have all questioned election results. At least Vance reminded some that Hillary denied Trump’s election in 2016.  But that wasn’t sufficient to counter the false argument of Walz.  Why didn’t Vance say the First Amendment was not only enshrined in our Constitution, but also that censorship and tyranny go hand in hand and that every tyrannical dictator has relied on selling his control over his subjects by calling it a protection of the “common good”.  No one admits that he wants to simply delete the speech of his opponents or detractors - it’s always “misinformation” as defined by the dictator.  Walz’s argument here is very dangerous to freedom.  Without free speech we have no other freedom.

Abortion was bound to come up and Walz brought up the tragic case of Amber Thurman, an unfortunate young woman so determined to end her baby’s life that when denied an abortion drug in her home state of Georgia, traveled to North Carolina to get it.  The drug killed her.  So sad in so many ways.  But Walz used THIS as an argument for abortion on demand!  Vance was obviously uninformed about this.  At least I assume he was because he could have said something to the effect of “Had Ms Thurman elected instead to carry her baby to term she could have made the dreams of some childless couple come true by putting the child up for adoption, the child could have perhaps had a wonderful, fulfilling life and Ms Thurman could have gone on with her life without the burden of having killed her baby.  Had the drug been available in Georgia, she could have stayed home and died there of the drug - which is what killed her.  So Walz is saying that we should expand the availability of drugs and procedures that kill women?”  At least that would have been my response.

Well, they mosied on to the topic of the border, and available housing, etc.  Nowhere did I hear Vance call out Harris for the absurd and weird policy of just dropping off 20,000 Haitians in a down-and-out town of 60,000 people.  The corruption involved in such a decision is mind-numbing.  He could have explained what we have been hearing from those on the ground in Springfield, Ohio - his own stomping ground - that subsidies to migrants have been used to displace and evict long-term residents from their homes in that town.  That the jobs being filled are never advertised locally, but are contracted for through outside agencies with the companies before they are even open to be filled.  None of this was aired.  

When Walz talked about supporting local businesses, blah, blah, blah, why didn’t Vance counter with the stories of the businesses Walz shut down during his power binge during “covid”, even to the point of throwing business owners in prison simply for being open and paying their employees.  How, by the way, can small businesses contend with the liberal maternity/paternity leave demanded by Walz?  Sure - Minnesota does have a large number of big companies such as Target, 3M, etc.,  which could sustain this whereas Milly’s Diner, Joe’s Bar and Grill, Jane’s Boutique, the local shoe repair shop, a dental office, etc., cannot.  It would put them out of business.  This is not a benign policy at all, but a very aggressive and harmful one.  Why not at least raise these questions?  

Gun violence?  Again, a lost point.  Walz blathered on about how guns were the problem and how in Finland where no one has guns, the suicide rate is lower and there is no violence.   One wished that Vance had mentioned Finland’s neighbor, Norway, known for its unarmed citizenry, where a gun-free zone ended up a killing field at the hands of someone who didn’t follow the law - in other words, someone who was also willing to break the law about not murdering kids.  It is an indisputable fact that where more citizens are armed there is less tendency to mass shootings such as Walz invoked.  To Walz a public school is a good model for what he wants for all of American society - lock-down control, unarmed, helpless “citizens” dependent on some faceless authority for their lives and safety.  Preventing this scenario is exactly why our founders wrote the Second Amendment.  Walz loves the Chinese CCP police state.  He is a lot like Justin Trudeau - he wants everyone in line.

Walz conjured up an image of Trump running around prosecuting his opponents once in office.  (We might wish.)  But it was Democrats who have been literally prosecuting Trump from the moment he left office - unrelentingly.  It would have been a good move to bring that up because as we all know, every time Trump is indicted he makes gains in the polls.  And he might well have brought up the persecution of the hundreds rotting in DC prisons for simply showing up to a rally in which FBI agents were used to incite unrest (there was no violence caused by the rally attendees - only the FBI thugs and DC and Capitol Police).  Again these people were forgotten and forsaken by Vance.  Another missed ball.  

At one point, Walz was implying that Republicans want to get into everyone’s bedroom.   In no way have Republicans indicated any interest in what consenting adults are doing in privacy, so does Walz refer to acts between adults and children under the age of consent?  Someone should have asked him this.  And it’s rich that Walz loves to chant his mantra, “Mind your own damn business!”  when he is the guy who instituted a snitch line for people to report on their neighbors’ social gatherings (in Minnesota he ordered no more than 10 indoors or 25 outdoors, masks, social distancing, etc.).  Had Vance played this right, every time people heard the words, “Mind your own damn business” it would have instantaneously translated into “Snitch Line”.  He could have said this - “Whenever you hear ‘Mind your own damn business’, think ‘snitch line’,”  Walz stuck his nose into more peoples’ private business than any other politician in our history.

When Walz conjured up the image of the horrific effects of Hurricane Helene, so much in the news now, as a means of introducing his "climate change" rant, why did Vance not correct him?  In 1916 a similar hurricane swept through the area with comparable devastation.  No one was running air conditioning, few were driving cars.  We had no airplane service for celebrities and politicians to use for easy, rapid transit.  Temperatures have fluctuated forever.  In North Dakota we have prehistoric tropical-type dinosaur remains and fossils of primordial, tropical vegetation and more recent evidence of receding glaciers.  The lakes in Walz's own state are the remains of melted glaciers.  Vance is highly educated - he must know this.  Why not share it with Walz and the rest fo the world?  Why stipulate to a false premise?  Another lost opportunity.  

Had JD Vance been the guy to do this, Walz would have spent the next weeks in hiding.  This was his task.  He failed.  Most non-conservative commentators are calling the debate a draw.  It was.  Those inside their happy conservative bubble can call it a win if they like, but Vance really landed no points.  Just the fact that Walz lied about being in China at the time of the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre - in which thousands were killed and thousands more injured - and even chose the anniversary of that day for his wedding speaks volumes, but it was passed over, allowing Walz to slide by without even blushing.

Over and over again, Vance asserted that he and Walz were “in agreement”.  How nice.  How “civil”.  How ineffectual.  If the public is left with the impression that we’re all in agreement, why go to the polls just to get your name in the jury pool?  It’ll all be ok.  Even that bulldog JD Vance is in agreement and failed to land any real blows on Walz.  Walz is, if anything, a bit worse than Kamala Harris.  He thirsts for power - it’s his only real interest.  He demonstrated his style during the covid hoax in Minnesota, and we couldn’t have done worse under Vladimir Lenin.  We could go on, but the “Mr. Nice Guy” approach leaves one very empty when it comes to debating the likes of Walz, who should be in jail himself.  It is criminal to leave these basic points on the table and prattle on about one’s three precious children.  I wish them all well, and Walz’s kids too.  But that’s not what we were tuning in to hear about.  It doesn’t matter what the “experts” like Megyn Kelly and her circle, Ben Shapiro and his circle, Glenn Beck and his round table  or any other focus group says.  JD Vance let the team down.  Just as did Trump a few weeks ago.  I expected it, so although disappointed I can’t say I was surprised.  

None of these people is really smart enough, on any side of this.  Vance could have, and with absolute civility, left Walz to slither off that stage like the little worm he really is, for all the world to see.  Leaving him any dignity at all was massively dropping the ball.  One is left to wonder what happened there.