I can’t say I recognize the Republican Party that Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, championed onstage during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate. In response after response, Vance talked about policies that sounded nothing like anything any Republican would have advocated for this election cycle. It certainly doesn’t sound like an administration that his vice president, former President Donald Trump, is likely to install if he wins in November.

Let’s start with abortion, an issue that has weighed on Republicans since the conservative Supreme Court voted down Roe v. in 2022. Wade picked up. Vance rejected the idea that a nationwide abortion ban was something many Republicans supported. Instead, he tried to humanize the problem by talking about a friend of his who felt she had to terminate a pregnancy and pushing for a series of “family-friendly” policies that could help American families afford to raise children can. He later added that the federal government should invest in helping families pay for child care and use the funds to attract more child care workers to the field.

Vance further stated that Naturally, The GOP wants to save the Affordable Care Act’s ban on insurance companies taking advantage of pre-existing conditions against people. He said more housing needs to be made available to people to reduce the cost of having a roof over their heads. And he suggested that Trump facilitated the peaceful transfer of power by downplaying the former president’s plot to overturn the 2020 election.

On the one hand, the election campaign might have looked like this if Trump had not been the candidate. He has maintained the far-right branch of MAGA extremism and falsely blamed immigration for most of America’s problems. But he has tried to smooth out many rough edges, and in doing so has done what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis failed to do in his primary campaign: He presented a version of Trumpism that could go beyond Trump.

But remember Vance’s acceptance speech for the nomination at the Republican National Convention in July. There was none of the kind of “compassionate conservatism” he suggested Tuesday night in this speech. And when you connect his statements to what the GOP has done and proposed in the real world, there is no way to reconcile the two versions. There is no support among Republicans in Congress for a new federal child care program, nor has there been any desire among them to save the ACA. Vance said what he thought Americans wanted to hear — just as he would if he were ever in a position to challenge Trump as his running mate.

Likewise, Vance took pains to reassure the audience that he and his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, actually agreed on a lot, and suggested that Trump would look for bipartisan solutions if he got into the White House returned. It honestly sounded nice, a throwback to a semi-mythological era in which things were done in Washington, when both sides compromised for the good of the country.

But like most of the most promising words to come out of his and Trump’s mouths, it’s absolutely too good to be true. I would love it if the Republican Party that Vance promoted was real. But there is no world in which a second Trump administration ushers in a new era of common-sense solutions. Vance’s claim may be the biggest, most disturbing lie he has told on stage.