On Tuesday night, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance turned in a stellar debate performance while Tim Walz fell flat on his face like the sitcom clown dad that he is. 

The expectations for Vance were very high; he had to overcome that bar.

And he did it with alacrity.

Vance turned in one of the best Republican debate performances I’ve ever seen. The only one of the 21st century that even comes close to matching it was Mitt Romney’s first debate performance against Barack Obama.

In terms of optics, Vance accomplished his mission. His mission was to create a palatable method for swing voters to look at the Trump-Vance ticket and not see chaos.

There’s a reason that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz immediately made Vance the centerpiece of their campaign for the White House when he was picked. They tried to depict him as “weird.” It was the buzzword that the Harris-Walz campaign used as soon as Trump selected Vance.

It was always a strange word to use because, of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Vance is the most normal by far. He’s happily married, has kids, went to a good school, made a good living, and is now a senator from Ohio.

There’s nothing abnormal about Vance. But the goal for the Democrats is to paint the Trump-Vance ticket as “weird” and, therefore, out of bounds and unpalatable to vote for the Republicans.

Vance not only showed he is normal, but he also showed that he has a very high IQ. He wasn’t just fighting Walz last night on that debate stage. He was also fighting the moderators, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, the latter of whom was absolute trash. Every question directed at Vance came from the perspective of a person who wants Trump-Vance to lose.

In addition, Vance was able to turn the false fact-checks around to slam the moderator and Walz.

Every time Walz tried to launch such an attack, Vance disarmed him. Watching Vance, you felt comfortable that he was going to give a good, solid answer on every question he was asked and that every attack would be turned away with a nuanced point of view.

Walz had some major mistakes, but is that really going to hurt Walz in any serious way? Not really. Everybody already understands he’s a goofball.

But Walz was not able to accomplish his purpose last night, which was to paint Trump and Vance as totally unpalatable.

Vance also did something I think is important for all Republicans to take note of. Yes, he was facing an entrenched opposition. Yes, he was facing an overwhelming barrage of questions from people who hate him and his opponent. But what did he do?

He succeeded anyway. This is what we should expect of our Republican candidates. Republicans have gotten used to the idea of victimhood because there are so many people who hate conservatives and who are willing to lie. Additionally, the media are constantly lying about the issues, and they’re constantly attacking whoever the Republican is.

For my entire lifetime, during the era of Bush, McCain, Romney, and Trump, the GOP has had the mindset of thinking the obstacles are insuperable; they can never overcome them.

But Vance showed that when you have a smart person on the stage, overcoming them and being victorious is absolutely possible.

One area I hoped Vance could have done a trifle more was to paint Harris-Walz as not just incompetent, but also so insanely radical you should not vote for them. He commented several times that he agreed with Walz on a particular point, which made the Harris-Walz ticket appear more moderate than they are.

But the overall impression from this debate was that Vance is really smart, really good at this, and one day might make a great president.

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Earlier in the day, Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles at Israel. More Iranians were killed in the attack than Israelis because five Iranians apparently died on the ground in Iran when one of the missiles they were shooting blew up.

But it was still an act of war.

The Iranians fired an extraordinary amount of ordnance at Israel. They said they were targeting military bases, but a huge number of those missiles were directed at civilian areas. Israel, along with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, shot down a lot of this ordnance.

So what is going to happen next?

Israel is going to retaliate. They’re not going to go quietly this time. They’re not going to “take the win,” as President Biden told them after the first launch of Iranian ballistic missiles at Israel in April. Biden “told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States will not join an offensive counter-strike on Iran should Israel choose that road after Tehran attacked it this weekend, according to two people familiar with the conversation,” Politico reported after the April attack. 

It’s all too likely that the Biden-Harris administration will tell Israel to limit its response; this has been their move from the start. But all that has done is lead to further escalation because it turns out that in the Middle East, there’s a very simple rule: Weakness leads to escalation. Period. 

Strength is what matters in the Middle East. Perception of strength is what matters in the Middle East. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as much yesterday: “Iran made a big mistake tonight – and it will pay for it. The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies.”

So what exactly could happen?

There’s a lot of talk about Israel striking Iranian oil fields and blowing up some of the oil refineries, which would totally shut down the Iranian economy. That would probably put the Iranian regime on its last legs because the Iranian people do not like the regime and they particularly don’t like starving under that regime. So that could be a serious problem for Iran. 

There’s also talk about Israel trying to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran says the nuclear facilities are secure and safe. Israel might want to find out whether that is, in fact, true. 

The math after last night is very different in Israel. If there are nuclear tests on any of those cruise missiles and Israel has a window to significantly hamper or take out the Iranian nuclear facilities, they certainly ought to and probably will do it.

Palestinians were cheering the Iranian missiles. These are the supposed peace partners who Israel has been told to make concessions to; those are the people who Israel is supposed to help get a state in the middle of Israeli sovereign territory.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps pledged what they called a “crushing response” if Israel retaliates, which likely means shooting more of those missiles. 

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said there would be severe consequences for Iran after the missile attack. We will see what consequences the Biden administration is thinking about because, as always, they are extremely weak-kneed about all of this.

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I doubt whether Israel is going to hold up for the Biden-Harris administration. It’s also possible that Israel’s made clear to the Biden administration they’re going to do what they want to do, and either the U.S. can get on board or they can get out of the way — which, by the way, would be the proper response when your sovereign country is attacked by 181 cruise missiles across borders in multiple countries. (The airspace of Jordan and Iraq was used in these attacks.)

Other sources have reported that if Israel attacks oil facilities in Iran, Iran will then escalate by attacking oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Azerbaijan, Kuwait and Bahrain. If Iran tried to spread this fire to Arab states, to the Sunni Arab nations, that would be the worst move they could possibly make because, at that point, the full Sunni/Israeli coalition, the full Abraham Accords coalition backed by the United States, would be on the move.

Iran keeps miscalculating, thinking that if they tug on Superman’s cape, they’re not going to get hit.

But that is not the way this is going to go down.