JD Vance, a GOP candidate for the Senate in Ohio, has floated the bizarre idea that people with children should get more votes. He says they have a greater stake in the future.
Vance is a venture capitalist who also became a bestselling author with the publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. It looked back on his upbringing in Appalachia and was turned into an Oscar-nominated movie last year.
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More recently, Vance has turned his attention to a career in politics. He hopes to take the Senate seat that will be vacated next year by fellow Republican Rob Portman.
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Speaking to a conservative conference on Friday organized by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). Vance said that a lot of the problems in the US are down to the “childless left”. These people, claims Vance, have no “physical commitment to the future of this country.”
Vance, the father to two kids, highlighted Vice-President Kamala Harris, the transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Cory Booker, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as examples.
He said, “Why is this just a normal fact of … life for the leaders of our country to be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring?”
It should be noted that Kamala Harris is a stepmother to two kids from her husband, Doug Emhoff’s previous marriage.
Vance continued: “The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds. Let’s do this instead. Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children.”
Answering whether that meant that “non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents” and “that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions”, Vance said the answer was yes.
“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our Democratic republic, than people who don’t have kids,” he said.
“Let’s face the consequences and the reality; if you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
Vance went on to praise Hungary’s far-right, anti-LGBT President Viktor Orbán, for encouraging married couples to have children.
Orbán is currently trying to introduce a widely-criticized anti-gay propaganda law in Hungary. Within the Eastern European country, said Vance, “they offer loans to newly married couples that are forgiven at some point later if those couples have actually stayed together and had kids.
“Why can’t we do that here? Why can’t we actually promote family formation?”
The Washington Post’s Dave Wiegel mockingly said Vance might want to check out the Democrats’ child tax credit if he thinks that a good idea.
Interesting speech. Vance praised a policy by Viktor Orban that pays parents who have multiple children – “why can’t we do that here?” – but didn’t mention the Democrats’ child tax credit.
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 24, 2021
Prior to his speech, Vance talked to the Daily Caller about the issues it would touch upon. He again opined about the problems with childless people, especially in the media.
“What you find consistently is that many of the most unhappy, and most miserable, and most angry people in our media are childless adults. Let’s just be honest about it.”
Vance’s ISI speech was discussed yesterday on Fox and Friends, with the hosts thinking it was an “interesting idea”.
Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, who happens to have nine children, said, “it is absolutely true that people like AOC, Pete Buttigieg — you can name the left-wing politicians, people who think that we should legalize marijuana because they don’t have kids and they don’t really have a stake in what that looks like. I agree with him 100% that they don’t have a stake in the game.”
She added that although agreeing with Vance’s thinking, she didn’t think it was a “feasible” idea.
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JD Vance made headlines earlier this month when he praised former President Trump, reversing a position he took in 2016.
Back then, Vance said he would not be voting for Trump and posted a string of anti-Trump tweets. These have now been deleted. He told Fox News in early July, “Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016. And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy.”
He now believes Trump was, “a good president. I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.”
Both Portman and Vance have been regarded as fairly centrist Republicans. It appears Vance may now be taking a more right-wing position on issues if he holds up Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Trump, as good role models.
Vance’s ideas received short shrift from many online.
This is ridiculous and offensive. Married 31 years and could never have children; been a teacher for 30 years. Thanks for reminding me of the saddest thing in an otherwise wonderful marriage, though.
— Alicix (@dinahcat04) July 24, 2021
Ok. Because you can’t have empathy or concern for the health and safety of fellow Americans if they’re not blood relatives?!? That perspective says a lot about his ability to emotionally connect to folks who aren’t already members of his tribe.
— Adam Brown (@A___CB____) July 24, 2021
So he wants to bring back the voting system that slave owners got a vote for every slave they owned .. just now they will use their children instead. 🙄
— christina m. brooks (@runewarrior) July 24, 2021
If I get one for my dog who is a very smart boy
— BennyBenBenji (@BenBenTwoTwent1) July 24, 2021
Is this REALLY the same guy who wrote the best-selling book? Fooled a lot of us.
— Elida Witthoeft (@elidawitthoeft) July 24, 2021
Mister P
The climate change deniers, the anti Vaxxers and the ones who don’t want universal healthcare are much less concerned about the future than most of the “lefties” I know.
Man About Town
Rachel actually said “you can name the left-wing politicians, people who think that we should legalize marijuana because they don’t have kids and they don’t really have a stake in what that looks like. I agree with him 100% that they don’t have a stake in the game.”
Nice to know she’s just as dumb now as she was on TRW SF in ’92. I feel sorry for her 9 kids!
Chrisk
That’s rich coming from the same shitheads that could care less about the future beyond any short term profit then can make themselves. They aren’t known as the party of selfish assholes for nothing.
Also I’ve noticed that the one’s out there having the most kids could care less about the future. You know parents like the 100 kids and counting dugger loons.
novadude
So, with the planet seriously overcrowded we should have yet another artificial inducement to continue increasing the population?
OK, that makes sense. (not)
GentlemanCaller
It makes perfect sense if you’re worried that there aren’t enough white people. This guy was a more or less rational conservative once upon a time, but now he’s totally jumped into the trumpy rightwing racist end of the pool
Liquid Silver
Well, that makes absolutely no logical sense, but that’s fairly typical. Spitting out a kid does not make you special, or entitled to an additional vote, or anything else.
TomG
Fewer votes? Everyone gets ONE VOTE so I presume he doesn’t want them voting at all.
Cam
Republicans are desperate to go back to the time when only land owning white men could vote.
Max
wow, Vance is a moron. what’s most sad is that he doesn’t realize it and his ability to reproduce isn’t reflective of anything other than even cancerous cells or viruses can multiple as well.
Kangol2
Vance is yet another fake populist hypocritical opportunist, like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and other lickspittle Republicans who talk about caring for the (White) people at the bottom of the economic ladder but do everything they can to enrich billionaires and corporations. Vance loves to express contempt for coastal elites but his craven @ss was recently out in the Hamptons, about as coastal elite as you’ll get, kissing butt and collection campaign dollars, and those will be the chief people he caters to, not the Mamaws and other people in rural or working-class districts OR even the middle class White voters who have been brainwashed by Don the Con’s corrupt, treasonous smoke and mirrors claptrap. Don’t think he and others like him, dripping with privilege, won’t try to impose an anti-LGBT Viktor Orban-style fascist state if they get the chance. Don the Con already laid the groundwork.
skyboy63
JD Vance is trying to appeal to the Trump voters. I.E he is dumbing himself down. He is smarter than that. Do better JD.
dhmonarch89
so, Lindsey Graham should count like Pete- he doesn’t have kids.
Gordon of the Bassets
I dunno. Sometimes I suspect that Lindsey has had a lot of kids. And that the last guy might just proof of it.
Mr. Stadnick
Why don’t we just return to feudal times and just lords and squires vote and everyone else just works until they are dead.
JB
Seems there are a LOT of holes in his proposal. So does that mean people whose children passed away don’t get an equal vote? Or couples whose children are now adults? Or infertile couples? Or single people who have nieces and nephews? I could go on and on. This guy seems like a real elitist.
Gadfeal
1. I am all for updating the Constitution, which is what would be required.
2. However, I would also wish to introduce other changes:
a) All candidates for public office be required to pass an objective Constitutional Law bar-level exam; after all, their primary responsibility is to uphold the Constitution.
b) All representatives first have to pass a quick Q&A test that indicate that they have read and understand the proposed laws on which they would sign/approve. If they run into thousands of pages, do their job – not let Party cabals “do their work” – and desert their duty to represent the interests of their constitutents.
c) A more extreme form is to only allow people who can pass a basic civics test to register to vote.
d) If a proposal to reduce voting rights based on a potential to produce future voters, then most Americans, whose population, like all developed nations’, is at or beneath replacement rate, should see their voting power reduced, while the serial single parent with more children that they can afford, have more votes!
I mean, why is there such passive allowance of such pre-Age of Reason utterances even acceptable? What’s next, lower taxes from childless couples since they shouldn’t be paying for schools and education? What about gay men and women who do have children? Then, some would object that the “gays are reproducing”!
PerhapsYesNoMaybe
So based on his logic, the descendants of any government official or candidate should be held accountable if that official or candidate or their party harms anyone no matter how slight the harm. So he’s willing to sacrifice his offspring for what the GOP has done? Doesn’t seem like he’s thought things through.
BoomerMyles
What a waste of time. You’d have to pass a Constitutional amendment to effect that and we couldn’t even get the ERA ratified 50 years ago.
Heywood Jablowme
Hillbillies beat their kids a lot! Especially after a meth or opioid binge.
stafcoyote
I usually oppose burning books. For Hillbilly Elegy I will happily make an exception.
justgeo
Yes give the entitled shit heads more power for continuing and multiplying their bigotry and stupidity.
Fahd
Are the Democrats helpless in the face of this demagoguery? Can Ohio really go the way of Missouri (see Josh Hawley) and replace Portman with this guy? The Democratic party needs to figure how to address this claptrap and defeat these budding fascists at the ballot box. The time to act is now.
Kangol2
Portman is a Republican who, despite allegedly being “moderate,” repeatedly voted with Don the Con, so Vance would not be as radical a change as you might believe. On the other hand, Ohio’s other US Senator, Sherrod Brown, is one of the most progressive Democrats in the Senate, and was reelected handily back in 2018, defeating pro-Don the Con Republican Renacci 53% to 47%, at a time with Con had not completely blown up the US government, the economy, etc., so Ohio does elect Democrats, and even somewhat more enlightened Republicans (current governor Mike DeWine, a Republican of the older conservative cast), but the Democratic candidate really has got to be someone people want to put into office. The person cannot be Repub-lite or milquetoast, campaigning in fear of the GOP.
IWantAFullBeard
Fat people die younger than people in an appropriate weight category. Therefore those fat have less time in the country and should only get 3/4ths the vote. Since i can see both his chins in the picture, he gets a half vote.
btw – his book sucked. i made that comment long before he ran for senator.
Andrew
I would like to know why I, a childless person spends my time recycling when all the straight people in my building don’t give a $#^t and ruin the recycling effort. They don’t seem to care for their children’s future.
bryanbgu322
I will let him have a vote for his children but his children get to take on my tax debt each year so you can start paying back my 35,000 dollars I pay in federal, state , and local taxes. With right to vote comes the responsibility that goes along with that right so cough up the dough or shut your mouth. Like my friends say to those that are dumb talking sh*ts ” shut your hole and know your role
TomG
Fewer votes? Everyone gets ONE VOTE so I presume he doesn’t want them voting at all.
Invader7
Send this douche bag and his ilk to HELL !!! Which is where they want to take this country. They’re EVIL slime …