Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance once blasted his own party as being “openly hostile to non-whites” and condemned its policy of deporting migrants.
In a scathing assessment written after the Republican Party lost twice to Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Mr Vance said it was no surprise that the majority of its supporters were white.
“Republicans lose minority voters for simple and obvious reasons: their policy proposals are tired, unoriginal, or openly hostile to non-whites,” Mr Vance wrote in a blog entry.
Mr Vance wrote the post in 2012, but in 2016 when he decided to take a greater interest in electoral politics, he asked the professor who commissioned the piece to delete it.
He felt the existence of such a document could he harmful to his progress and the professor, Brad Nelson, who taught Mr Vance at Ohio State University when he was an undergraduate student, agreed to do so.
CNN reported that although Mr Nelson deleted Mr Vance’s essay, “A Blueprint for the GOP”, it is still available on the internet if one searches for it.
“A significant part of Republican immigration policy centres on the possibility of deporting 12 million people (or ‘self-deporting’ them),” Mr Vance wrote.
“Think about it: we conservatives (rightly) mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and regulate our food supply, yet we allegedly believe that it can deport millions of unregistered aliens.
He added: “The notion fails to pass the laugh test. The same can be said for too much of the party’s platform.”
Mr Vance’s essay was written at a time when many conservatives were searching for a more inclusive vision for the party, that would appeal to more minorities and younger Americans.
One such attempt was the Growth & Opportunity Project, better known as the RNC autopsy, created by the Republican National Committee and spearheaded by then RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. The project influenced a number of more moderate Republicans, such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush who ran for the presidency in 2016.
Mr Bush started as among the favourites but soon dropped out, overpowered by the populism of Donald Trump, whose narrow victory that year – secured by appealing to disgruntled white working class voters – acted as a rebuke to the RNC’s project.
Eight years after Mr Vance’s essay was deleted, he is now one of the most outspoken defenders of Mr Trump’s plan for mass deportation of migrants, and someone accused of inciting racist fervour by repeating debunked claims about Haitian migrant workers in Ohio eating family pets.
At the weekend, Mr Vance stood by his comments. He also said the sort of things he claimed was happening in Ohio, was one of the reasons he had changed his views on the former president. In a message to a friend eight years ago, Mr Vance likened Trump to Adolf Hitler.
“The reason that I changed my mind on Donald Trump is actually perfectly highlighted by what’s going on in Springfield,” Mr Vance said.
“Because the media and the Kamala Harris campaign, they’ve been calling the residents of Springfield racist, they’ve been lying about them. They’ve been saying that they make up these reports of migrants eating geese, and they completely ignore the public health disaster that is unfolding in Springfield at this very minute. You know who hasn’t ignored it? Donald Trump.”
Will Martin, a spokesman for Mr Vance, told CNN the senator had long supported strong border security measures, including deportations, and now held one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate. He said his views on deportations had changed since the time of the blog post.
He said: “There is nothing noteworthy about the fact that, like millions of Americans, Senator Vance’s views on certain issues have changed from when he was in his twenties.”
