Vance Courts Undecided Voters at GOP Midterm Convention
JD Vance told undecided voters at the Republican midterm convention not to hand Congress to Democrats, calling the opposition party hostile to America.
Vice President JD Vance made a direct appeal to undecided voters at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, asking them not to hand control of Congress to the Democrats in November's elections.
Vance told the audience that disagreement on individual issues should not determine how they vote. He said he was not asking anyone to agree with him on every policy, but to weigh the administration's record over the past 18 months against what he described as the radical positions of the opposing party.
"Don't give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there," he said, urging voters to recognise what he called the contrast with the radicals and the achievements of the administration.
Without naming the Iran war directly, Vance invoked conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot a year ago and who, according to Vance, hated war. He said there were people who supported the administration's actions and those who did not, and that he was not at the convention to relitigate Kirk's disagreements with others.
Vance also argued that the Democratic Party had become a group that stands against the country, saying the nation should belong to those who love it rather than those who hate it.
He raised a series of culturally charged issues concerning race and immigration. He took offence at a suggestion by Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, that Vance's grandfather would object to his marriage to a woman of Indian descent.
Vance said Democrats now sympathise with the terrorists behind the 11 September 2001 attacks rather than with people like his grandfather, and described the party as one driven by hatred of America and those who built it.