MILWAUKEE – Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance promised social conservatives Thursday that values voters will always have a seat at the table under a Trump administration.
Vance, 39, implored the key GOP voting bloc to “trust” Donald Trump, touting the former president’s conservative bonafides in his remarks at the Republican National Convention’s prayer breakfast.
“I ask my social conservative friends, as you see the administration unfold, as you see the campaign unfold, remember that this is a guy who delivered for social conservatives more than any president in my 39 years of life,” the Ohio senator said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “God & Country Breakfast.”
“I think he deserves a little bit of grace, and he deserves a little bit of trust, and I hope that you will all provide that,” the “Hillbilly Elegy” author pleaded.
The packed hotel ballroom erupted in applause, seeming receptive to Vance’s argument.
“Social conservatives have a seat at this table and always will so long as I have any influence in this party,” Vance vowed.
His message to conservative voters comes amid internal divisions within the GOP over a change to the party’s platform language on abortion.
Despite some pressure attempts and at least one protest outside the RNC, Republican delegates at the convention ultimately voted to cement softer language on abortion into the platform this week.
“I’m not happy with [the platform change],” Lesley Chisholm, the outreach director for Pro-Life Wisconsin, who attended a Monday protest against the new language told The Post.
She wished that the GOP wouldn’t “compromise any of the stands they’ve had for the last 40 or 50 years,” but admitted that won’t discourage her from supporting Republicans.
The 2016 platform, which was rolled over into 2020, backed a so-called “human life amendment,” commended efforts to restrict abortion nationally, and affirmed, that “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”
Ahead of this year’s convention, the GOP trimmed its platform down from 66 to 16 pages.
The abortion plank declares that Republicans will “protect and defend a vote of the people, from within the states, on the issue of life.”
“We proudly stand for families and Life,” it said. “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Student for Life Action, told The Post that language opposing late-term abortion and referencing the 14th Amendment is a positive.
“A lot of people have focused on what is on the cutting room floor,” she told The Post. “We are looking at what made the cut: Affirmation of 14th Amendment Protections & Condemnation of radical late-term abortion.”
Vance, who capped night three of the convention well a well-received keynote address, acknowledged the concerns of some social conservatives in his prayer breakfast remarks while attempting to reassure them.
“There have been a lot of rumblings in the past few weeks that the Republican Party of now and the Republican Party of the future is not going to be a place that is welcoming social conservatives,” he said.
“And really, from the bottom of my heart, I would say that is not true.”
