Do Republicans Want to Rehabilitate Socialism?

By Noah Rothman

Friday, October 09, 2026

 

Of course, if he wanted to, JD Vance could define socialism. He just doesn’t.

 

Contrary to the vice president, “socialism,” a theory of socioeconomic organization in which the state, to varying degrees, owns property and enterprise and redistributes private wealth and goods based on central planners’ determinations, is not a “hard term to define these days.”

 

“Classically, you would think, socialism is about prioritizing workers,” Vance said. That sounds nice! But in the vice president’s view, today’s self-proclaimed socialists have perverted the philosophy’s noble intentions. “So, I don’t know what the term means anymore.”

 

“Vance has to redefine socialism as ‘things I oppose’ because if he defined it in terms of its actual economic philosophy, he’d agree with much of it,” our own Phil Klein observed.

 

Klein is probably right that Vance’s brand of self-described “post-liberal” economics too closely resembles classical socialism to be honest about it. But think about that for a moment: Vance cannot, or will not, argue against socialism just weeks before an election in which the GOP’s hopes rest almost entirely on polarizing the electorate against the Democratic Party’s rising socialist wing. What’s more, he won’t do that because, if he did share the GOP’s priorities, he’d have to put off feathering his own political nest.

 

If Vance cannot define socialism, how can Republicans expect him to combat it? And make no mistake, that is what the GOP’s voters want from their representatives. They are not in thrall to the “warmth of collectivism.” They don’t hunger for the public appropriation of private goods and the inefficient distribution of resources to reengineer society so as to match Vance’s expansive vision for us all.

 

The vice president’s personal project in the second Trump administration has been to rehabilitate big government in the eyes of Republican voters. And he’s enjoyed some success. Pew Research Center, for example, found that GOP support for “big government” rose from 20 percent in 2020 to 24 percent in 2025. But the GOP still despises socialism. While the Democratic Party is increasingly inclined toward state ownership of the means of production, Gallup’s late-September survey found that only 14 percent of Republicans are similarly disposed.

 

So Vance will have to spend down his accumulated political capital to rehab socialism’s image on the right. And it seems he’s doing just that:

 

 

The strategy here, if there is one to speak of, is mystifying. In 2026, the Republican Party is all but united in its opposition to the rise of socialist candidates. Its voters seek a champion who can cogently and forcefully articulate their fundamental and inviolable values. Perhaps foremost among those values is the belief that remote technocrats in Washington can never have the requisite knowledge to distribute resources as efficiently as markets. What’s more, they don’t want to surrender their freedom to Washington just so it can engage in that timeless folly.

 

Vance isn’t fighting socialism. He’s surrendering to it. But is that what Republican voters want?