By: L. Cramer
In the aftermath of hurricane Helene, a longshoremen strike and local stores being stripped of toilet paper – again – the vice presidential debate wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind Tuesday morning. However, despite the country slipping into crisis and turmoil at nearly every edge, Senator JD Vance and Governor Tim Walz stood on a CBS stage last night and hashed out many thoughts, ideas and plans for the future of America; and one really awkward exchange where Tim Walz didn’t quite admit, but totally admitted, that he lied about being in Tiananmen Square during the political protests in the Spring of 1989.
Can I be frank? Well, no, because I’m a woman, but if I were Frank, I would say that the United States is currently on fire with no hope of putting it out. We are bombarded every day with bad news, disasters and the cost of everything continues to rise with no end in sight, and yet the vice presidential debate gave me something to believe in – and no it wasn’t anything Tim Walz said.
Senator JD Vance, a man who grew up poor with a drug addicted mother but managed to pull himself out of that death cycle, showed that he is an intelligent, poised and thoughtful human being. In my opinion, Tim Walz was nervous, scattered and didn’t really contribute much to the conversation because he simply hammered the same old talking points we heard in the Trump/Harris debate. But Vance not only controlled the debate, he controlled the entire stage.
I’ve never seen someone so calm, cool and collected in the face of clear adversity as Vance was last night. Not only did he command and dominate every conversation from immigration to economy to, for some strange reason, climate change but he also did it with grace and respect wrapped in truth and facts. Quite honestly, I want to be more like him and less like myself when sitting in a room full of people who don’t like me.
Even when the CBS moderators, who will be forgotten in a few days, started fact checking Vance, he called them out and it stopped. But his shining moment, in my eyes, was when he got his opponent to agree with him – multiple times. What we saw was Tim Walz trying to rattle, accuse and be nasty to Vance – just like Harris did to Trump – but his attacks fell flat pretty fast when Vance refused to acknowledge Walz was trying to attack him.
When you can get your opponent, who calls you “weird” and lies about you constantly to millions of Americans, to agree with you on a debate stage and basically become the beta male to the alpha male, you’ve shown the world what kind of person you really are.
This debate gave me hope for the future of America, because Vance was a conservative on point, prepared and ready to call out every lie of the left that was thrown his way. To be honest, most Republican lawmakers are not cool, calm and collected in the face of adversity and they actually live life on the defense as the left lobs shots at them over and over.
I wish more Republicans were like JD Vance. If we had politicians who knew the facts, were cool in the face of great adversity and knew how to flip the conversation from defense to offense, man we would win more elections.
