By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
Five readers of my recent commentary criticizing the selection of U. S. Sen. J. D. Vance as a vice-presidential nominee sent me e-mail messages with their reactions to what I wrote.
I hasten to add that only two of those responses disagreed with my negative comments about the senator’s suitability for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a heartbeat away from the White House.
Although I was pleased with the fact that 60 percent of those who responded agreed with my observations, I decided to watch the movie, Hillbilly Elegy, a second time to make sure I hadn’t been too hasty in my judgement of Vance, whom I consider a visiting carpetbagger.
The movie, of course, was based on Vance’s best-selling book of the same title in which he blamed the domestic violence and poverty he had suffered while growing up in Middletown, Ohio, on his parents and grandparents being natives of East Kentucky.
Vance is the same opportunist who once described Donald J. Trump as “America’s Hitler” and said he was unfit to be president of the United States of America.
I coined the term “visiting carpetbagger” to describe Vance’s diatribe toward East Kentucky being void of family values and work ethic which he absorbed while only spending summers with his grandparents in Breathitt County.
Unlike the carpetbaggers who swarmed into the South following the Civil War to seize political and economic power during Reconstruction, Senator Vance apparently acquired his vast knowledge of the people of the Bluegrass State while only attending the equivalent of summer school or perhaps just summer camp.
And his Ivy League law degree seems to have lost some of its luster as he tries to explain extremist comments such as childless women being unprepared for leadership or being entitled to vote.
It’s no wonder that Democratic leaders are giddy about having Vance on the Republican ticket. At this point in the campaign, I better understand how the Democrats have raised $200 million and recruited 170,000 campaign volunteers just since the Republican National Convention. Contact Keith at keithkappes@gmail.com.
