By The Daily Caller (U.S.) | Created at 2026-07-29 04:20:31 | Updated at 2026-08-04 14:44:38
6 days ago
So much can happen between now and the 2028 Republican presidential primary, but that hasn’t stopped a smear campaign from forming around the GOP’s top contender.
New polling from the Manhattan Institute shows Vice President JD Vance as the Republican frontrunner for the party’s 2028 primary vote. Of all Republican voters, 37 percent chose Vance as their top choice, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio receiving 20 percent of the vote. Other notable Republicans like Donald Trump Jr., Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. trail far behind Vance and Rubio with low single-digit support.
Interestingly, the Manhattan Institute noted that “Vance’s advantage is driven largely by his strength among the ‘MAGA’ coalition, where he leads self-identified MAGA movement voters with 49% to Rubio’s 16%.”
Another poll is out with Vance in commanding lead of the 2028 Republican Primary
Vance polls strongest with GOP voters, and takes a decisive victory in head-to-head matchup pic.twitter.com/bM2FkMo7bE
Still, despite the base’s clear support of Vance, there seems to be a coordinated effort among pro-Iran War advocates on the right to paint the picture that the vice president is bleeding support from MAGA and the broader coalition of Republican voters. Their complaints about Vance largely stem from his attempts to negotiate our way out of the war. These same people claim to wholeheartedly support Trump out of one side of their mouth and attack Vance as someone lacking good judgment for entering into negotiations with the Iranian regime (at Trump’s request) out of the other. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
If you listened to Babylon Bee’s Joel Berry, Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, or even Vance’s supposed friend Rod Dreher, the vice president lacks governability or effective decision-making skills needed to be president. For some, it’s because he is antisemitic for wanting to end the war with Iran. For others, like Dreher, they claim that Vance is too cozy with the groypers.
What’s interesting about these critiques is that none of the men lobbing them Vance’s way seem to care about how this war they seem to love so much is destroying the stability of our country. Nor are they interested in having an honest conversation about why they dislike Vance, which to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear seems to be that they find Vance insufficiently interventionist on behalf of Israel. It’s as if there could never be enough flowing blood and destruction to satiate their lust, and because Vance is the face of winding down the war, he receives their ire, not Trump.
Weimar Germany?
“If you destroy everything that is, what comes next is never better.”
Sigh. It's Groundhog Day. Again.
One role of conservative pundits like Boreing, and now Dreher, is to defend the liberal post-war consensus against anyone who dares to acknowledge, and heaven… https://t.co/JeFVnIF7zU
Dreher is especially interesting due to his unexplainable chokehold on conservative thinkers. Here’s a man who divorced his wife and left his children in America to move to Hungary, now feigning concern over the future of the conservative movement should Vance be the next presidential nominee. He wants to make it perfectly clear that he’s morally opposed to Nick Fuentes, but not to abandoning his family. And yet, his opinions are upheld in the conservative town square. He deserves chastisement and mocking.
But personal faults aside, there is something so insidious about a man who would disclose private conversations he had with Vance as part of the smear campaign. Just two years ago, Dreher claimed to be his friend; now he’s softly accusing Vance of anti-semitism and being the leader of the groypers.
Vance has had the most boring milquetoast take, that being Israel is an ally and should be treated like any other ally such as France or Europe.
THAT is getting him maligned as a “groyper” https://t.co/vF9l3W7IDj
In no reality should Dreher be the GOP’s moral gatekeeper when he can’t even manage to govern his own actions.
It’s important to note that calling Vance out for a political misstep is a crucial part of keeping him within the fold. Similar to how voters do with Trump when he starts getting weak in the knees over deportations. However, that’s not what is going on here. None of this reflects a movement born out of genuine concern. (ROOKE: GOP Leadership Infected With Severe Electoral Dysfunction)
It’s obvious that the anti-Vance group is part of a coordinated campaign attempting to tank Vance’s political future. It is comical that they think we can’t tell. Even more so that they think it’s having even the slightest movement with the base.
.@roddreher has been back in the U.S. for 5 minutes and is airing his private conversations with the VP, while (falsely) claiming that 40% of the people dedicating their youth to public service are “groypers.”
At @americanmoment, we work daily with the staff who Rod slanders and… https://t.co/44Zi3aKMbF
The Manhattan Institute polling is pretty clear that if Vance were to run today, he’d get the nomination.
Interestingly, many of the same people who were responsible for the DeSantis-Trump fracture in 2024 are now pitting Rubio and Vance against each other. For months they’ve been shilling their anti-Vance narrative to no avail. Thankfully, so far, neither man has taken the bait publicly. And the base seems to be ignoring their manufactured outrage.
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