‘Pro-worker’ Republicans are status quo toadies cloaked as populists | Bhaskar Sunkara

JD Vance, Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley love saber-rattling about elites'. But they have no interest in taking on corporate power

JD Vance, author of the bestselling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, wants to be a senator. He's fresh off a trip to visit Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago and he's solicited the support of the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel has contributed $10m to a new Pac - Protect Ohio Values - created to support a possible Vance bid for the Senate seat of the retiring Republican Rob Portman next November.

While elite donations roll in, Vance is playing up his rightwing-populist credentials to the Republican base, praising Tucker Carlson as the only powerful figure who consistently challenges elite dogma" and complaining about corporations who have opposed state voter suppression efforts. But Vance has a secret he doesn't want voters to find out about: in form, and substance, he's a 1990s Clintonite.