Name: WSJ Opinion: JD Vance and Marco Rubio: Who's the Future of the Republican Party?
Uploaded: 2026-07-21T21:47:00Z
Duration: 23 min 2 s
Description: Chatter about 2028 picks up, as the Vice President presents a worldview skeptical of free-market economics, including in his book "Communion" and on the Joe Rogan podcast, while the Secretary of State offers the public a different vision.

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Chatter about 2028 picks up, as the Vice President presents a worldview skeptical of free-market economics, including in his book "Communion" and on the Joe Rogan podcast, while the Secretary of State offers the public a different vision. Photo: Christopher Arbisi

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260721/f635834e-d4b2-4702-ae3f-533a49511917/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Chatter about 2028 picks up, as the Vice President presents a worldview skeptical of free-market economics, including in his book "Communion" and on the Joe Rogan podcast, while the Secretary of State offers the public a different vision.

WSJ Opinion: JD Vance and Marco Rubio: Who's the Future of the Republican Party?

JD Vance and Marco Rubio, two men with big jobs and big ambitions, lay out differing visions of their worldviews, prompting renewed chatter about the future of the Republican Party and President Trump's MAGA movement.

From the Opinion Pages of "The Wall Street Journal," this is "Potomac Watch."

Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with "The Wall Street Journal." We're joined today by my colleagues on "The WSJ's" Opinion Pages, columnists Matt Continetti and Barton Swaim. One of our colleagues, Matthew Hennessey, who edits the new "Free Expression" newsletter, is outright calling it "The Shadow Primary: Vance vs. Rubio", in his piece online today. Here's the subhead, quote, "The race for 2028 has started with both men putting down markers on issues like the economy, capitalism, and communism," unquote. Barton, one place that Vice President JD Vance is doing that is in his new book called "The Communion." You read it, you reviewed it for "The Journal," called it part religious memoir, part campaign book. What were your takeaways of the message that the VP is trying to convey?

Yeah, well, it almost read like two books. It seemed to me as though he had started it by intending to write a genuine religious memoir, an account of his conversion to Catholicism. And then, somewhere around the halfway point, it becomes a campaign book in which he lays out his vision for a new kind of economics or something like that. And sometimes, Christianity makes its appearance and sometimes it doesn't. In a lotta ways, the second half of the book, Vance sounds like he does all the time, which is a little like a, especially when he's talking about sort of economic and topics that appeal to intellectuals and so forth, he sounds like a paleo-conservative egghead. He appeals to a very small and very defined, but dialed in, segment of the MAGA movement: anti-interventionist, pro industrial policy, very attuned to edgy culture war topics. And he's way more intellectualized in these ways than Trump ever was. In the book also, as in real life, he's oddly sanguine for a Republican about the motives of bad actors abroad. He mentions Vladimir Putin in that regard in the book, and of course, in recent weeks, he's expressed the same kind of optimism about the Iranian regime. And I think most saliently for me, in the book, he spends a lot of time, as he does in real life, attacking other conservatives and Republicans. And particularly in the last few chapters, he really has a go at traditional Republican views on economics and sort of caricatures them in a way that I think is slightly discreditable. I just have it open to me here, and in one passage, he says that, you know, when he was growing up in Ohio, people took care of their elderly. But in more recent decades, because of the, you know, hyper market economics or something, nursing homes took over. And so we farm out our old people to, we pay people to take care of them because that's better for the GDP. Now, that's just a kinda despicable way of caricaturing economic views he doesn't like, but it's typical, I think, of the man and the politician.

Another place that Vance is laying out his views is a recent long podcast appearance with Joe Rogan, Matt. And he gets into some of these economic issues. Let's listen to one clip of his appearance there.

So like, does the socialism thing scare me? Yes. Is it the wrong solution? Yes. But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is, socialism is the alternative if we don't have a pathway to give people a sense that the system is not rigged and that the American dream is attainable. That's like our job. That's what we have to do. I'm not saying Rome was built in a day. It's not gonna be easy to undo some of these economic trends, but man, we ran the experiment. We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and finance economy, and allowing Wall Street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investible, you know, line goes up asset. And what has that done? It's created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted to socialism.

Yeah.

We have to fix that problem.

Man, he also made the argument that he, JD Vance, stands for a kind of third way between what he described as, you know, communism, socialism, and this kind of libertarian, free market over everything approach, which is a little bit amusing to me. Because the idea that the United States has been governed by hardcore free marketers anytime in my lifetime is a bit of a joke.

Yeah, I mean, I liked the third way. That was Clinton and Blair. You know, maybe it will work for Vance in the same way. Look, I think JD Vance has a challenge, Kyle. The challenge is to hold onto the Trump 2024 coalition as the probable GOP nominee in 2028. This is a challenge that every sitting vice president who wins his party's nomination faces. And it's practically an insurmountable one. There's been only one vice president in the modern era who's succeeded his boss by election, and that was George H.W. Bush in 1988. Reagan's approval rating on election day 1988 was in the high 50s. Maybe Trump's will be in the high 50s on election day 2028. It's gonna have to go up for that to happen, however. But I think when you look at Vance's appearances on podcasts like Rogan's or when you read, as Barton valiantly did, his book, you'll see that he's trying to kind of theorize or formulate what Trump just did in practice. And that explains his attacks on kind of the service economy or offshoring. Of course, Trump has always attacked offshoring. It explains his kind of defense of a non-interventionist foreign policy, which is not quite the Trump foreign policy, and we can explain the differences later. And it also, I think, explains his embrace of several conspiracy theories. You know, conspiracy theories have always been in the background of Donald Trump's rise. Let's not forget, in the past two decades, he intervened in politics first with the birther smear against Barack Obama. And so I see Vance trying to reproduce not only the Trump platform, but also the Trump coalition. But if we look at history, we find that it's a very difficult job for a vice president to do. Because at the end of the day, he's not the genuine article. He's not Donald Trump.

Somewhat different tone from Marco Rubio, secretary of state only one of the hats that he has been wearing in this second Trump administration. Let's listen to a part of a speech that Rubio recently gave as part of some remarks at the State Department: "A Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism."

One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of Communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice. That's actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory. The world it envisions for all of us is small, flat, gray, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive towards, a world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things. And the world Communism envisions is a world without God.

Barton, notable contrast there. JD Vance, I don't think it's an unfair characterization saying that the socialists and the communists, they have some points about the failures of our capitalist market system in the United States and we need a third way triangulating between these two extremes. Rubio saying, on the other hand, communism doesn't even sound good.

Right. It's a very interesting contrast, and also, I think, it's, you know, as Matt was saying, Vance is trying to in some way interpret Trump. I think Rubio is also interpreting Trump. Of course, Trump contains multitudes, so we can do that. I think Trump, excuse me, Rubio has done a very impressive job of making pro sort of capitalism and Western culture arguments that Trump has made in his first term in a speech, I think, in Poland. And at other times in scripted speeches, Rubio has made those arguments, the sort of arguments that Trump would make if he were able. But Trump is not really, with those few exceptions, Trump is not an explainer. He's a great communicator who doesn't explain anything. And I think Rubio is explaining that component of Trump's worldview. Rubio has also developed a reputation for competence in an administration that often seems beset by chaos. Think of RFK and Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth and making headlines generally for the wrong reasons. Rubio has sort of kept his head down and done his job really well. Rubio has one disadvantage, though, in this, if we're taking this to be a sort of presidential shadow run, and that is that he'll have to step down from the office he holds now if he wants to run. Whereas JD Vance won't have to. But on the other hand, Rubio has a great advantage, and that is he is very articulate on his feet. It's been a long time since Republicans could look to a president or even a presidential candidate who was really good on his feet. You know, you think all the way back to George H.W. Bush used to say, "I don't articulate things very well," pronouncing the verb as the adjective. George W. Bush was famously intellectually fully gifted, but couldn't quite spit it out in many ways. And you have to really go all the way back to Ronald Reagan. And you know, when Republicans, the average Republican, hears someone expressing traditional sort of conservative arguments in a way that is fluent and attractive and positive and optimistic, I think that has a lot of appeal, certainly more so than, to my mind, than some of Vance's darker conspiratorial remarks.

Rubio also has more experience, I think, making those arguments. I remember seeing him on the campaign trail in 2010 when he was swept into Congress in this Tea Party wave, talking about the contrast between the free market US system and the Cuban system. On the other hand, I suppose JD Vance also has some experience making free market arguments, if you go back and read his first book, "Hillbilly Elegy." Matt, another contrast, I think, that is becoming clear that's emerging between these two men is on foreign policy. JD Vance, lead negotiator of the memorandum of understanding with Iran, saying that he's hoping that the leaders in Tehran are trying to turn over a new leaf. Rubio not putting himself out in front of that ceasefire process that has now fallen apart. And obviously, there are a couple years at least to go before Republican voters are really sizing up their 2028 candidates. And so there is room for what is happening with Iran right now to develop certainly, but they seem to have different approaches, with Vance more in line of negotiating and giving the US adversaries an opportunity. And Rubio, I think, may be a little skeptical of that.

Yeah, in some ways, this is a tale of two memoranda. The first is the memorandum of understanding that JD Vance helped negotiation between the United States and Iran. And as you say, Kyle, that agreement lasted about a month. The Iranians violated it from the outset, and just in recent days, basically past 10 days or so, President Trump has then launched an operation of retaliatory strikes, with an undefined goal. It's not clear whether he wants to escalate and just change his objectives or whether he wants to get the Iranians to actually meet the conditions. In any case, MOU's not seeming to work out right now. Contrast that with the memorandum of understanding that Secretary Rubio negotiated, helped negotiate between Lebanon and Israel. And we're recording this on the day that the Lebanese prime minister is visiting the White House for the first time in over a dozen years, and that agreement at the moment seems to be working out better than the Iran MOU. But I think it's important to take a step back for a moment. There's a lot of talk about Vance and Rubio and the differences, the similarities, a lot of speculation about what a Republican primary run might look like in 2028. I think we should just say, there's no evidence that Marco Rubio's gonna run for president. He's said that he won't run for president. He's said that he's friends with Vance and that they actually work together very well. And as Barton suggested, kind of the steps that Marco Rubio would have to take to run for president are several and complicated and really rely primarily on President Trump's choice. I think, in the background to this discussion is, who does President Trump want to run to succeed him in 2028? And he holds out it seems, according to reporting, the possibility that maybe Rubio might be a better presidential candidate than Vance, so he goes back and forth and he likes Vance too. But right now, it seems to me that Vance is on a glide path toward the nomination for a few reasons. One, he has double-digit leads in the polls. He benefits from the Trump fundraising network. He's the RNC finance chair. He's been raising millions of dollars, all of which will then be going to his coffers starting in 2027, once the midterm cycle is up. And third, he benefits from kind of being Trump's, you know, sidekick. He's there on every issue, not just foreign policy issues that Marco Rubio is on. So while it's interesting to talk about Vance vs. Rubio, I think the most likely option right now is the one that President Trump has said, which is that Vance and Rubio will be the ticket, not rivals, in 2028.

But on the point about President Trump, let's listen to a clip of him in May fanning the speculation.

Okay, let's go, you ready?

Audience: Yeah.

Who likes JD Vance? Who likes Marco Rubio? All right. Sounds like a good ticket. JD is a perfect, that was a perfect ticket. By the way, I do believe that's a dream team, but these are minor details. That does not mean you have my endorsement under any circumstance.

I just don't think it sounds like the president of the United States to have a televised competition for who would succeed him as his apprentice. I just think that's not at all what you would expect the president to do. But no, look, I think the president, he's always been fascinated by politics. If you talk to him, he was fascinated by politics 30 years before he ever ran for office. So I think it's natural for him to, you know, joke around with us a little bit, to play around with the idea, but I can tell you the president is as focused as any of us on making sure we do as good of a job now for the American people.

Matt, in your column last week, you make the argument that Vance, as the sitting vice president, is almost a shoo-in for the nomination if he wants it, looking back at some political history. On the other hand, we have broken a lot of political history in recent years. President Trump winning the presidency as a first political office, President Trump coming back after being ousted by the voters and winning a second term, you know, four years after the fact. We have Joe Biden dropping out of the campaign in 2024 on the verge of the Democratic Convention. And so who knows? I mean, maybe it depends on what the polling looks like, but a secretary of state and a vice president running against one another would not be the craziest of the things that I've already listed.

No, absolutely, Kyle. And you're right, we have broken a lot of new ground. We've also retrod upon old ground, right? It was 2024 was the last time since 1968 that a sitting president withdrew from his reelection bid, and of course, his vice president went on to get the nomination and lose. The flip side of vice presidents almost always getting the nomination is that they almost always lose the general election. So you're right and you put your finger on it. It's Trump, right? We really don't know what Trump is gonna do. And we saw in JD Vance's clip there kind of his joke about "The Apprentice," about having a televised kind of competition. We know that Trump is probably going to withhold his endorsement for as long as possible because he believes that the second he issues it, he will kind of transform into a lame duck president, if he isn't already heading down that course. So for all those reasons, the Republican nomination, which you would think would have some degree of stability to it, can be seen as almost as unpredictable as the Democratic nomination in 2028, which is, of course at this point, completely up for grabs.

Matt mentions dabbling in conspiracy theories being part of the populist secret sauce for, I mean, Donald Trump, but all sorts of politicians are doing that these days. Let's listen to one more clip of Vice President Vance on Joe Rogan, wide-ranging interview. He branded himself as a Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theorist. He talked about UFOs. Then he was asked by the host, Joe Rogan, why he previously suggested the US foes might be demons. Let's listen to this.

So if you look historically at, you know, things that are similar to the alien phenomenon, where oh, some like strange being, it kinda looks like a human being, but doesn't look like, but it's not human, and it shows a particular interest in human beings, and then it takes the human beings and, you know, like does weird experiments on them, I think my argument is, that's either, right, you're either talking to a crazy person, which I'm not saying just because I believe in the supernatural, doesn't mean I believe in everything supernatural. But if we're talking about an extraterrestrial being that is human-like but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there's a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon.

Barton, I get that we live in a media environment without gatekeepers these days and these politicians are trying to go on book tour, get people to notice what they're saying. But does that kinda stuff play that the vice president of the United States musing about aliens and whatnot? I mean, maybe that's one more advantage Marco Rubio has is, he has so much stuff to do as secretary of state, and I don't know what other seven hats he's wearing in the administration right now, he does not have time to go on podcasts talking about aliens.

Yes, Rubio has to talk about actual things in the world. It's very strange and I have no idea if it plays. If it does, it will play in the nomination process and very much not in the general, I would think. And one thing that I have noticed and noted a few times in our pages is that, unlike previous vice presidents, who felt, rightly, that their job was to go out and make the case for the president and the president's case alone, you often find Vance freelancing and just talking about his own things. He often refers in speeches to I in the first person, you know, as if we all showed up to hear what the vice president thinks of this issue. That's an unusual approach historically, I think, at least in modern times, and I don't know if it will play. I've wondered if, you know, the president himself picks up on this. But it's a weird thing to do, and especially now that we're talking about aliens and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with any policy at all, just sort of his weird midnight ruminations.

Thank you, Barton and Matt. Thank you all for listening. You can email us your own midnight ruminations at pwpodcast@wsj.com. If you liked the show, please hit that Subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of "Potomac Watch."

Political videos providing critical perspective and analysis that goes beyond the “what” of Donald Trump’s Washington, and also explains the “why.”