JD Vance made a clear pitch that he should be the heir to Donald Trump on Thursday night, closing out the Republicans’ midterm convention with a blistering speech that featured exaggerated claims of success, criticism of Democrats as “lunatics” and an aggressive dismissal of a protester waving a Mexican flag.

Speaking in Dallas, the vice-president showed he could channel the basest instincts of his boss, filling his remarks with dog whistles and echoing Trump’s false claims that Democrats “cheered” the 7 October massacre of Israelis.

Vance had been met with chants of “JD, JD,” as he walked on to the stage: the liveliest response anyone besides Trump received across the two-day convention, with some shouting that he should be the nominee in 2028.

“We gotta take care of business this November, then we’ll worry about what comes next,” the vice-president responded with a smile.

Vance began the speech by running through a list of Republican grievances, channeling Trump’s pugnacious attitude toward immigration as he told the crowd that two years ago “we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous”.

The Make America Great Again (Maga) crowd inside the arena liked that line, but the loudest cheer of the night came when Vance responded to a protester who briefly interrupted his speech. Vance claimed the protester was waving a Mexican flag, and adopted a fiery tone as he said: “Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there – I’ll buy you the plane ticket.”

The applause was rapturous.

The vice-president had to walk a tightrope coming into the speech, arguably the most important address of his short political career. He had to present his own case to the Republican base, without breaking too much from the notoriously sensitive Trump.

Vance praised Trump as “the toughest SOB in American politics”, and paused repeatedly as the crowd lavished him with cheers and applause.

He also invoked the recent birth of a fourth child, saying he had been looking at “the future of this country through the eyes of the future of my son” and “the birthright of this newest of Americans”.

Addressing Democratic “radicals”, whom he accused of wanting to destroy the nuclear American family, he boomed: “Stay the hell away from our kids.”

But it was also a speech aimed squarely at rallying the Maga faithful: attacking transgender rights, extolling the importance of American manufacturing and religious freedom, and accusing Democrats of “doubling down on the crazy”.

Vance showed a penchant, too, for Trump’s baseless statements, claiming that some Democrats in New York “cheered on” the slaughter of Jewish people on 7 October, and suggesting that a “new generation” of Democrats seek to defund the police and “abolish the border”.

“What is it that drives this new generation of radical Democrats? It’s not new policies. They’ll say the same stuff: defund the police, abolish the border, the green new scam. We’ve heard all this stuff before,” Vance said. He then tried out a new line: “I think that what’s new about them is what motivates them is a new type of hardcore hatred.”

Vance won applause, too, for his praise of Charlie Kirk, the far-right activist who was assassinated in Utah exactly one year ago. Addressing Kirk’s children, who were not in the arena, Vance said: “History will record that your father was a great man.

“Those of us who loved your dad, we know him as something even better than a great man – he was a good man,” he added of Kirk, a man who, among other things, endorsed Trump’s stolen-election lies and the racist great replacement theory.

One problem Vance could face should he run in 2028 is his attachment to the deeply unpopular Iran war, and foreign policy was conspicuous by its absence in his speech. Last week he rejected the use of the word “war”, but said he wouldn’t set “artificial lines” regarding an end to the conflict. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Trump’s advisers have raised the prospect that the war could drag on through the rest of his term.

Vance did not address the war directly. But in an oblique reference he invoked Kirk’s disdain for conflict.

“Charlie hated war,” Vance said, before pleading with undecided voters to not abandon the party over policy differences.

“What I’m asking you to do is do what Charlie did: do not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said. “Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.”

A poll found Vance was the favorite choice among likely Republican primary voters, with 43% saying they wanted him to be the nominee in 2028. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, got 21%; Donald Trump Jr was at 7%.

Vance will hope those numbers stick, but he wasn’t the only one auditioning in Dallas. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary who switched parties to support Trump in 2024, praised the president and attacked the Democratic party during a well-received speech earlier on Thursday, while Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, received a rousing response in his home state.

“They hate Christians, they hate Jews, they hate the ‌capitalism, they hate ⁠the constitution and they hate America,” Cruz said of Democrats, offering no evidence for his claims, but very much tapping into the theme of the two-day convention.

Rubio did not speak at the convention, instead taking part in a tour of South America. Both he and Cruz ran against Trump in 2016. During that contest, Trump dubbed Rubio “Little Marco” and suggested Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of John F Kennedy.

Vance, by contrast, has never publicly attracted Trump’s ire, and he will want to keep it that way as he seeks to take on leadership of the party in two years’ time. That was probably the thinking as the vice-president ended his speech, shouting over jubilant applause that Trump was the “greatest president” before relinquishing the stage for his boss to bring the convention to a close.