Before Tuesday night’s debate, the Trump campaign briefed reporters on Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s plan for the night: Attack Walz, attack Walz’s record, and once again for good measure, attack Walz. Only that didn’t happen.
“Spin aside, each man is going in with the same goal,” Politico’s Playbook
wrote Tuesday morning: “Paint the other guy as extreme and out of step with the American people.”
The night was a public triumph for Vance, but behind the scenes, it was a more personal victory for House Republican Whip Tom Emmer.
“Expect Vance to hit Walz, per a spokesperson, ‘on his far-left agenda, including his disastrous record on border security, being soft on crime, and his overall failures as Governor of Minnesota.’”
“Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s biggest goal in Tuesday’s debate against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be to cast him as too liberal for most Americans,” Axios
reported on Monday, listing weak points the senator would supposedly hit, including lawlessness, Walz’s lies about his military rank and service, his lies about his family using IVF, and being as radical as Democrats get on abortion and trans issues.
Walz was ready for it. Of course, none of it happened.
Vance didn’t waste any time going after his opponent or his record and was even genial when he wasn’t attacking his true target: Vice President Kamala Harris. He was so on-target that he even shot a little sympathy Walz’s way, fretting for the governor’s “tough job here” defending Harris and attacking former President Donald Trump’s record.
The night was a public triumph for Vance, but behind the scenes, it was a more personal victory for the House Republican whip, Tom Emmer of Minnesota. Emmer caught a number of headlines last month after Trump campaign sources revealed that he was privately debating Vance as a stand-in for Walz.
Emmer was a good choice. He’s lived in Minnesota since the 1980s, when he went to law school there. He joined the state House 20 years ago and in 2015 was elected to Congress. That means he spent four years going to work with Walz, attending local chamber events, competing in the Land of 10,000 Lakes’ annual hotdish dinner, where congressmen and senators compete to make the best take on a one-dish casserole.
Oh, and he’s got no love for Walz, who upon leaving Washington, D.C., to become governor five years ago has squandered most of the North Star State’s once-massive budget surplus, overseen an explosion of violent crime, turned the state into a “trans refuge” complete with tampons in school boys’ bathrooms, and banned reporting on infants born alive and left to die in the murderous late-term abortions his administration signed into law.
Suffice to say, the two aren’t pals. Emmer reportedly thinks his old colleague is a fraud dressed up in camo gear. And while Vance might know that voters in Pennsylvania aren’t going to change their votes because Tim Walz let Minneapolis burn for days before responding to the mayor’s request for National Guard reinforcements, Emmer sure cares that the Twin Cities have been turned into a husk of their former selves.
It’s been four years since I visited to report on the 2020 election, and I can personally say the nighttime streets were abandoned by all but drug addicts and criminals that autumn. The bartenders, waiters, hotel staff, and shopkeepers we met were lovely, but all of them lived in fear of the next bout of political violence. Everyone had been impacted and hurt. Everyone was afraid.
It wasn’t Vance’s job to tell that story Tuesday night. But it was Emmer’s pleasure to take an active role in seeing the man who’d allowed it get beaten and embarrassed in front of the whole country.
“Emmer’s goal,” a source close to the majority whip told Blaze News, “was to help JD expose him as a fraud on a national stage. Mission accomplished.”
The Federalist: In Minneapolis, rage and fear have hobbled a great American city
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