Analysis: Vance's selection solidifies Trump's hold over the GOP

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

76% : Likewise, Bolton said of Vance and Trump: "The bottom line is these are candidates who do not fundamentally understand that a strong American presence in the world is good for us here at home."
57% : But they would have very limited levers to compel Trump to play a more engaged international role, he said.
54% : On trade, Trump has moved far beyond his first-term actions to promise sweeping tariffs of 10% on all imports and additional levies of 60% or more on products from China.
49% : "The distance between that "new definition" and the GOP's traditions before Trump may be the greatest in the intertwined issues revolving around America's interactions with the world.
47% : "Trump, though, does share his running mate's desire to decouple from Europe.
47% : The remaining question is whether that internal victory is liberating Trump to pursue policies that will ultimately cost him with a broader audience of Americans, either in the campaign or a second presidential term.
45% : "They are celebrating that choice both in Milwaukee tonight and in Moscow," former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said after Trump announced the selection last week while Republicans were gathered in Wisconsin for the convention.
43% : On immigration, beyond completing his border wall and requiring asylum seekers to "remain in Mexico" while their cases are adjudicated, Trump has pledged to deport an unprecedented number of undocumented immigrants already living in the US, complete with detention camps and use of the National Guard to round up deportees.
43% : Fontaine said all evidence suggests Trump doesn't view China much differently than any other country, including long-standing allies, that he believes "have taken advantage of us for a long time.
42% : In one of the campaign videos he's used to sketch out a second term agenda, Trump says that if reelected, he would "finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission."
41% : "We now have Trump and a younger and more committed version of Trump.
39% : This time Trump felt impregnable enough inside the GOP to choose a running mate who doesn't offer outreach to any of those groups (except, to some extent, social conservatives).
39% : In office, Trump moved away from the GOP's traditional free trade stance, imposing 25% tariffs on an array of foreign imports (not only from China but also Europe and even Canada) and renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement started under George H.W. Bush.
38% : Instead, with Vance, Trump chose an acolyte and potential successor who could deepen and extend the direction the former president has set for the party.
38% : Vance's first campaign ad in his 2022 Senate race highlighted his support for Trump's border wall and forcefully rejected the idea that hostility to undocumented immigration was racist.
37% : "While Trump faced relatively little internal resistance over his hardline policies on trade and immigration, his determination to retreat from international alliances was limited by opposition from many of his senior national security officials, who had roots in the party's Reaganite internationalist traditions.
34% : While Trump in 2016 "needed to play the politician" in mollifying other Republican factions, "now Trump doesn't need anyone in the party - he has conquered everyone," said Geoffrey Kabaservice, director of political studies at the libertarian Niskanen Center and author of a history of moderate Republicans.
34% : On each of the key elements of defensive nationalism, Trump has indicated that he intends to push much further in a second term than he did in a first.
34% : Trump cited the logistical challenges involved ("Taiwan is 9,500 miles away," he said.
31% : "In Vance, Trump has picked a running mate and governing partner likely to nudge his boss further toward a retreat from the world.
31% : "He wants Trump eventually to say 'I don't care,' and is betting on the fact that the Europeans will eventually fall apart over it.
30% : With the selection of Vance, Trump has broadcast his belief that he has conclusively won the internal GOP debate over all aspects of US interactions with the world - foreign policy, immigration and trade.
28% : After complaining that Taiwan "did take about 100%" of the US semiconductor business, Trump insisted, "I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense.
27% : In 2016, Trump felt compelled to choose as his vice president Mike Pence, who provided a bridge to an array of constituencies suspicious of the New York business executive at that point.
25% : "A reelected Trump who denies or diminishes aid to Ukraine, but cannot force an end to the fighting, might expose himself to grave political risk, two right-leaning foreign policy analysts recently argued in an article for The Bulwark, an online publication published by conservatives critical of Trump.
24% : But if Trump simply refuses to dispatch US troops to repel a future Russian attack, "there is no one who can compel him to defend NATO allies," said Fontaine, co-author of the new book, "Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power.
22% : In an interview with Businessweek published last week, Trump even cast doubt on whether he would defend Taiwan from an invasion by China -- a commitment that has been a deliberately ambiguous, but enduring, pillar of American foreign policy.
22% : Alone, differing views on America's relations with the world may not be enough to peel many of those Haley-type voters away from Trump this fall.
19% : In his brief political career, Vance has embraced militantly isolationist, protectionist, and anti-immigration positions -- the three critical elements of the defensive nationalism that Trump has stamped on the GOP.
19% : And he expressed deep skepticism about the value of America's traditional alliances in Europe and Asia: John Bolton, who served as his national security adviser at the time, has said publicly that he feared Trump was on the brink of quitting NATO at a 2018 meeting of the alliance.
19% : "The fall of Kyiv and Ukraine to the Russians, if Trump and Vance have their way, has the potential to be far uglier. ...

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