Many conservatives have regarded Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal as one of the sharper and more reliable columnists on the right. In recent months, however, she appears to have contracted a sudden and acute case of Vance Derangement – VD, for short. It is a condition that looks remarkably similar to the Trump Derangement Syndrome that afflicted so many in 2016 and the years that followed. The difference is that some of those people now find it safer and more convenient to aim their fire at the vice president rather than at the president whose agenda he is working diligently to advance.
The latest episode began with a simple factual error. Strassel criticized Vice President Vance for missing a meeting on Capitol Hill shortly before his wife, Usha, gave birth to their fourth child. The criticism was misplaced on its face. Yet instead of course correcting, she redoubled the attacks — and in a recent column, unveiled an imaginative new smear: that Vance is an “anticapitalist.”
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