Much attention was paid, for good reason, to the recent sold-out convention of Turning Point USA, the group The New York Times describes as the nation’s “preeminent conservative youth organization.”

The attention-paying was due to more than the fact that TPUSA, which was founded by the late Charlie Kirk, has become a major player on the American political field. The main attraction was the deep fissure that emerged at the MAGA-minded gathering. Some called it a “civil war,” one whose victors will determine the future orientation of the growing conservative movement in American politics.

On one side of the divide was commentator Ben Shapiro, who, in his speech, minced no words condemning the grand poobah of the other side, popular podcaster Tucker Carlson, for having hosted and coddled the repulsive misogynist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes on his program.

Mr. Shapiro said that hosts are “responsible for the guests they choose.” He characterized Mr. Fuentes as “an evil troll,” and Mr. Carlson’s friendly interview of him “an act of moral imbecility.”

“If you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes,” he said, “you ought to own it.”

Mr. Shapiro also denounced rabid anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, media personality Megyn Kelly and pundit Steve Bannon, whom he called “frauds and grifters.”

“The conservative movement is in serious danger,” he asserted, “from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.”

Mr. Carlson, in his speech, dismissed Mr. Shapiro’s attempt to “deplatform and denounce” people, and called him “pompous.”

The following day, Ms. Kelly, noting the internecine feud, declared the end of her friendship with Ben Shapiro and criticized another traditional conservative, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. And went on to play the Israel card.

“It’s about Israel,” she said. “Those two are very…ardent Israel activists, which is fine, but they don’t get to dictate how the rest of us feel about Israel or what we do with respect to our friends and our friends’ opinions on Israel.”

She called Mr. Shapiro’s insistence that the conservative movement sever ties with people like Carlson and Owens “a betrayal.”

Particularly disturbing to me, though, was the closing convention speech delivered by Vice President JD Vance, who, in a thinly-veiled swipe at Mr. Shapiro, condemned what he called conservative “purity tests.”

“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives,” he said, “to denounce or to deplatform.”

In addition to his subtle defense of Mr. Carlson and, by association, Mr. Fuentes, the vice president also declared that “Christianity is America’s creed.”

He stressed that he was “not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American,” but was just noting how, “If you go to almost any food pantry in this country, you will find Christians feeding the poor…you’ll find Christians sitting patiently beside hospice beds and in recovery rooms and in all the places of the world where people have given up on other people.”

He seemed oddly oblivious to non-Christians dedicated to chesed.

Israel was on the vice president’s mind as well. In a subsequent interview in the British medium UnHerd, Mr. Vance said that the fear of Fuentes and his ilk are “overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign-policy conversation about America’s relationship with Israel.” He further claimed that concerns about anti-Semitic voices are raised as a way to avoid discussing “a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy” regarding Israel.

Mr. Vance has called Israel an “important ally.” But his words, to my ears, reflect a purely transactional embrace of the country. Israel provides intelligence and promotes regional security, and, in exchange, earns American aid and cooperation.

The opposite of a transactional relationship is a “relational” one, where the parties value each other for reasons beyond mutual benefits.

Joe Biden, whatever one may think of his presidency or policies, and despite his disagreements with Israel’s current government, had a relational connection to Israel. He regularly called himself a Zionist.

“Biden’s connection to Israel,” former Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller once said, “is deeply ingrained in his political DNA.”

I don’t quite get that feeling from Mr. Vance.

To read more, subscribe to Ami