DALLAS—The American family is on the ballot in November.

That was Vice President JD Vance’s message when he headlined the second night of the Republicans’ midterm convention on Sept. 10.

Vance mentioned that a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives had “said, and I quote, ‘eff the nuclear family.’”

The candidate is William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District.

The full quote, from 2021, came from a since-deleted exchange on X. One user had said she wanted to “teach all millennials and zoomers how to do communal living well.”

Lawrence wrote that the biggest win of his late 20s had been “finding a long-term stable co-op house,” adding, “[expletive] isolation and the nuclear family domicile.”

In response to such sentiment, Vance said during his speech: “To the radicals who wish to abolish my family and the thousands and millions of other families all across our country, we have a simple message for them: Stay the hell away from our kids.”

Speaking as a father again for the fourth time in July, Vance defended what he called the American birthright for the children of American families, including great medicine, a good, patriotic education, a good job, public safety, affordable housing, and free speech.

“That birthright … is what this November is all about,” Vance said.

Fraud, Protests, and November

The vice president touched on several policy hot topics in his address, including fraud, war, and the cost of housing.

He also talked about many personal subjects and at times went off script.

“We’ve found $250 billion of fraud just since the president made me the fraud czar,” Vance said.

He said that “fraudsters” of foreign origin are gaming the system in several states and in so doing are taking money out of public programs meant to benefit “our children and our new and expected mothers.”

At one point, a protester interrupted his speech by waving the Mexican flag.

“I had a whole speech written, but I think I gotta change it,” Vance joked.

He speculated that the protester would much rather be living in Dallas or any other American city than in Mexico.

That comment got the convention crowd riled up. They broke out in chants of “fight, fight, fight!”

Vance was impressed with the enthusiasm of several women seated behind the stage.

“Ladies, I’d like to know what you had to drink, because I’ll take two of them when I’m done,” Vance said.

Along with several speakers at the convention, Vance had kind words for conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated one year ago today while speaking to students at Utah Valley University.

Vance called Kirk a “good friend,” and he said he hoped that Kirk’s young children would come to understand that he was both a great and a good man.

The vice president also said he hoped the children would come to know that “God is a father to the fatherless.”

He didn’t claim that Kirk would have agreed with everything the Trump administration has done since his passing.

“Charlie hated war,” Vance said, in the part of the speech where he reached out to folks who might not agree with the U.S. military actions against Iran.

But he said voters shouldn’t “give the country over to a bunch of crazy people” in November over that.

Vance’s 2028 Chances?

On the day of Vance’s speech, The Epoch Times asked several convention-goers for their thoughts on the vice president, the future of the GOP and his role in it as the possible presidential nominee in 2028.

Gabe Guidarini, a political operative from Ohio, treated it as a foregone conclusion that Vance should be the nominee.

“Vance is the guy, hands down,” Guidarini said.

He foresaw a primary fight between “plenty of people in the old guard of the conservative movement who are more skeptical of him” because of a disagreement over the right purpose of the Republican Party: “Is it to protect markets or is it to protect the American way of life?”

Guidarini said he thinks that preserving a way of life is the right focus and he thinks “Vance thinks that too” and is up to the job.

Nate Sheets, the Republican nominee for Texas agricultural commissioner, said it was too early to pick a horse.

“The great thing is we’ve got a lot of really talented people in the Republican Party. You know, whether it’s JD Vance or whether it’s Marco Rubio. I mean, there is a lot of talent,” Sheets told The Epoch Times.

He said Trump’s dress shoes would be hard ones to fill, and that it is imperative not to “take the high road” and “get punched in the gut all the time” but rather to “fight back.”

“We need to be aggressive, and we need to fight for the American family,” Sheets said.

Rep. Chip Roy is a Republican from Texas’s 21st Congressional District who is not running for reelection. He said it is too early to think about the 2028 presidential race.

“Right now, we need to stay focused on November. I know you’re going to say, ‘Oh, that’s what everybody says,’ but it actually happens to be true,” Roy told The Epoch Times.

“If we start looking ahead to 2028 and take our eye off this prize, then we risk having a very miserable two years,” Roy said.