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Some “anti-elitists” on the Right say they want the GOP to be the party of the working class. But what they’re really offering is a PR campaign that won’t fundamentally change the lives of workers.
[…]
This is all to say that when parties of the Right promise to renew the postwar glory days, they might be able to win over a significant portion (or even a majority) of working-class voters, but they do so in accordance with the rules
of what Peter Mair calls the “void” — a hollowed-out party system, enfeebled unions, and historic levels of demobilization and disorganization for the working class. And once in government, maintaining power requires managing that void, not restructuring it.
This is certainly the case for Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on being the voice for “laid-off factory workers” but, after his election, quickly settled into “conventional Republican, market fundamentalist policy,” in the words of Julius Krein.
The new workerist Right has always eagerly trumpeted industrial renewal, but only recently have they confronted the limited appeal of manufacturing jobs without the promise of
unionized manufacturing jobs. In September,
American Compass made a splash with a statement “
on a conservative future for the American labor movement”: signed by Marco Rubio, Jeff Sessions, and other prominent Republicans, the letter urges conservatives to ensure that workers “have a seat at the table” by “reform[ing] and reinvigorati[ng] the laws that govern organizing and collective bargaining.”
[…]
When Jeff Sessions speaks of workers in heroic terms, does he mean the same workers he has actively
prohibited from organizingthrough the curtailing of collective bargaining rights? And when he talks about “American greatness,” does he mean the kinds of policies that have made his home state the fifth poorest in the country, thanks largely to his “leadership” opposing bills to
reshore jobs or raise the minimum wage, and his support for nearly every free-trade agreement and corporate tax-cutting proposal?
[…]
For the workerist Right, given the perceived gentrification of the Democratic Party, it’s the GOP who are ripe for a working-class realignment. In fact, this seems to be their main charge to the Left — how could any progressive be so naive as to play ball with the Democratic Party
when the Republicans are where the workers are — or soon will be? It’s a faulty premise from the start.
[…]
The contradiction of right-wing parties making left-wing economic appeals has always resolved itself in one direction: upward. The economic program gets dropped as soon as the financial sponsors of the party — and their own anti-tax voters — have any say.
This has obviously happened with Trump, who allowed libertarian Paul Ryan to run his domestic agenda, but it’s also happened all over the world.
Matteo Salvini in Italy, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India, Orbán in Hungary — all these right-wing populists promised worker power and ended up pushing massive corporate tax cuts. Trump’s own tax cuts — the greatest since Ronald Reagan — have kicked off a new furious global race to the bottom, heightening inequality, failing to raise wages, and starving the state of revenue needed to jump-start investment in jobs and industry. The Republican Party is fundamentally an anti-tax, pro-corporate machine — that’s not any less true because Tucker Carlson stopped wearing a bow tie.
Some “anti-elitists” on the Right say they want the GOP to be the party of the working class. But what they’re really offering is a PR campaign that won’t fundamentally change the lives of workers.
jacobinmag.com
