JD Vance endorses the ideas of Kevin Roberts, leader of Project 2025, as a “fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics” and a “surprising – even jarring” path forward for conservatives, the Republican vice-presidential nominee writes in the foreword of Roberts’ upcoming book.
The foreword was obtained and published in full by the New Republic on Tuesday. Roberts’ book is out in September. Its title was watered down recently to remove references to “burning down” Washington DC.
In the foreword, Vance finds parallels between his upbringing and that of Roberts, and between their visions for what the US needs. Both grew up in poor families in parts of the country “largely ignored by America’s elites”, with Roberts in Louisiana and Vance in Ohio and Kentucky. They’re both Catholic, with Vance as a convert in his adult life. Both had grandparents who played big roles in their upbringing.
Now both are in DC, with Roberts “just a few steps” from Vance’s office.
Vance praises Roberts for using his perch as the president of the Heritage Foundation, a large rightwing DC thinktank, to advance a more radical conservative vision rather than resting on the foundation’s laurels.
“The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump,” Vance writes. “Yet it is Heritage’s power and influence that makes it easy to avoid risks. Roberts could collect a nice salary, write decent books, and tell donors what they want to hear. But Roberts believes doing the same old thing could lead to the ruin of our nation.”
The Trump campaign has tried to distance the former president from Project 2025, a conservative roadmap for a second Trump term that includes policy ideas unpopular with the voters Trump needs to win. But Vance’s ties to Roberts, like the foreword, make it harder for Trump to make the case he doesn’t know what the project is.
In the hours before the foreword was published by news outlets, Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, said he was stepping down from his role and that some of the project’s work was winding down, though it’s not clear what that means. The project consists largely of a 900-plus-page policy manifesto and an effort to find potential staffers for a second Trump term. Roberts said the plan to create a “personnel apparatus” for all levels of government would continue.
Roberts has faced scrutiny in recent weeks for comments that the US is “in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be”. His ties to a radical part of the Catholic church, Opus Dei, and belief that birth control should be outlawed were also revealed by the Guardian.
Vance has previously said Roberts “is somebody I rely on a lot who has very good advice, very good political instincts”, he told news outlet Notus in January. He said that Heritage, under Roberts, went from a “relatively vanilla” thinktank to one that is willing to participate in the fights and debates on the right about where the party should head.
On two subjects in particular, Vance praises the way Roberts lays out the stakes and his goals: reining in large tech companies and focusing on a Christian view of the family.
He notes that Roberts argues the US founders wouldn’t have envisioned the way companies like Apple or Google would amass power to “censor speech, influence elections, and work seamlessly with intelligence services and other federal bureaucrats”, saying this “deserves the scrutiny of the Right, not its support”.
And Vance agrees with the way Roberts recognizes that “cultural norms and attitudes matter”.
“We should encourage our kids to get married and have kids,” Vance writes. “We should teach them that marriage isn’t just a contract, but a sacred – and to the extent possible, lifelong – union. We should discourage them from behaviors that threaten the stability of their families.”
This belief in the family also means that conservatives need to ensure that families aren’t just for people with wealth, which calls for creating better jobs and listening to young people when they say they can’t afford homes or families, he writes.
“Roberts is articulating a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics: recognizing that virtue and material progress go hand in hand,” Vance writes.
In order to create the America Roberts and Vance envision, conservatives need to go on offense – not just remove policies they don’t like, but rebuild the country in what Roberts has referred to as a “second American Revolution”.
“The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems – we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach,” Vance writes. “As Kevin Roberts writes, ‘It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.’
“We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
