How J. D. Vance Can Manage the Fractious Right

Richard Nixon demonstrated the formula for success.

The political Right is fracturing. As the second Trump administration’s first year nears an end, the latent tensions in the conservative coalition have started rising to the surface.

The Right has divisions on foreign policy, pitting anti-interventionists, who question America’s relationship with Israel, against neoconservatives, who advocate a more muscular approach to threats like Iran. On domestic policy, various factions feud: establishment conservatives have turned against Tucker Carlson after he “platformed” the provocateur Nick Fuentes; Marjorie Taylor Greene has broken with President Trump over his refusal to release the Epstein files; Candace Owens has gained a large audience peddling right-wing schizo-politics; and activists have mounted campaigns—thus far unsuccessful—to oust the presidents of both the Heritage Foundation (for pushing the institution in a more populist and purportedly Christian nationalist direction while refusing to condemn Carlson) and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (for giving excessive prominence to postliberal and paleoconservative thinkers).

President Trump seems to be operating above the fray, uninterested in managing these disputes or—in the cases of those involving online discourse or conservative institutions—perhaps unaware that they are happening. Trump’s political power has never depended on the think tank world or institutional conservatism. He tends to govern as a strong executive who appeals directly to public opinion, often bypassing the Right’s traditional gatekeepers. This has been a productive approach, but in the current moment it has created a vacuum, which the competing factions look to fill.

For several years, the man who successfully managed these disputes and brought the various groups into a single coalition was Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. After Kirk’s assassination in September, it became clear how much he mattered and how much he had held the Right together. It is no surprise, therefore, that after his death the movement’s fractures started to become more visible.

Conservative institutions have thus far been unable to produce a leader who can fill Kirk’s role, but one figure already has the authority, familiarity, and political skill to manage these divisions: J. D. Vance.

The vice president has a deep understanding of Trump’s MAGA base. He is fluent in the language of conservative intellectual institutions. And as a relatively young man, he can mediate the conversation between older conservatives, who operate through the Fox News system, and younger conservatives, who get their politics online.

How should Vance approach this challenge? To answer that question, we might recall the experience of another man who rose to the vice presidency early in life, dealt with the problems of racialism and conspiracism within the Right, and, through trial and error, learned how to manage a coalition, win the presidency, and win reelection in a 49-state landslide: Richard Nixon.

Between 1960 and 1968, Nixon confronted similar fractures on the right, including an ongoing battle with the archconservative John Birch Society. The Birchers were suspicious of Nixon and his boss, President Dwight Eisenhower, whom they suspected of harboring Communist sympathies.

After losing the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy, Nixon tried to rehabilitate his career with a run for governor of California two years later. Fearing an association with right-wing conspiracism, Nixon issued a full-throated denouncement of the John Birch Society, refused to endorse Birch candidates running for statewide office, and demanded that Republican leaders repudiate Birch Society president Robert Welch and those who supported him.

As a consequence, the 1962 election focused on the issue of “political extremism.” This simultaneously weakened Nixon’s support on the right and strengthened support for his opponent, Pat Brown, in the center. The difference proved decisive. Nixon lost the election but learned his lesson. As he laid the groundwork for his comeback presidential campaign between 1966 and 1968, Nixon adopted a new strategy. Rather than focus on denunciation and repudiation, he threaded the needle.

Nixon maintained strategic distance from the Birch Society as an institution while appealing to rank-and-file right-wing voters, including Birchers, on a message of strong anti-Communism and law-and-order politics. He calmly and coolly portrayed the Birch Society as a spent force without letting this message descend into spectacle and theatrics. He won the election in 1968 and again in 1972, letting victory render the issue moot.

Vice President Vance might consider a similar strategy. Conservatives have variously demanded that he denounce Tucker Carlson, repudiate Nick Fuentes, and break with the neoconservatives or, alternatively, with Israel. Thus far, Vance has wisely sidestepped these conflicts and sought to convey a unifying message.

As these conflicts play out, however, this neutral position will become less tenable. Vance will have to make choices.

As it was for Nixon, Vance’s best approach would be to adopt broadly popular positions and marginalize the factions pushing unacceptable racialism and conspiracism, which are poison pills for any presidential campaign.

Candace Owens, who has questioned the moon landing, might garner rubberneckers on YouTube, but her form of schizo-politics will not persuade middle-class America in the voting booth. Likewise, Nick Fuentes can stage hyperreal spectacles that divide the institutional Right, but his actual positions—cynical deployment of Nazi symbols, opposition to interracial marriage, and so on—are designed to evoke outrage, not win votes. Interracial marriage, for example, enjoys a 94 percent approval rating; any political candidate that comes out in opposition would be committing electoral suicide. (Vance himself happens to be in an interracial marriage.)

If Vance can stake out popular positions, maintain strategic distance from unpopular figures, and bring together the Right’s legitimate factions, he will have laid the foundation for a strong campaign.

It would also be wise to remember, as Nixon did, that addition through subtraction works. Putting together a majority requires not only mobilizing groups that can deliver votes but also disaffiliating with or sidelining groups that could hurt the coalition. Fringe racialists and paranoid conspiracists are precisely the kinds of factions that should be managed out of the coalition.

The fight will not be easy. There will be conflict and controversy. But Vance has already demonstrated the skill necessary to bring new elements into the coalition, such as the so-called Tech Right. And he has refused to take the bait from figures like Fuentes, who have tried to provoke him. The challenge ahead will be even greater. I hope he is up to it.