Yet Republicans seem intent on proving they cannot govern. How did they go from the supposedly responsible party to one that threatens to shut down the government, offs its own House speaker and squanders voters’ preference for them over Democrats?
It is tempting just to say “Trump” and leave it at that. And it is true that former president Donald Trump is sufficiently distasteful to enough voters of a moderate persuasion, especially among college graduates, to prevent the GOP from building a governing coalition for some time. His party can win some elections, but not by much. However, blaming the GOP’s bad situation on Trump overlooks the ways in which he is not just a cause but a symptom of the party’s fundamental problem: its tilt toward the working class.
Since the breakup of the Democrats’ New Deal coalition about half a century ago, the GOP has become steadily more working class and therefore more dependent on appealing to that base. Initially Republicans were able to take advantage of the breakup of postwar Democratic voting blocs by promulgating an anti-welfare, anti-tax agenda that, along with an aggressive cultural conservatism, appealed to many working-class voters.
But this was not a sustainable strategy. Working-class voters, as many of their communities continued to deteriorate, lost faith that lower taxes and less government were really the solution to their problems — however much those principles might appeal to business supporters of the GOP. It was Trump’s genius to break with orthodox Republican economics, particularly on trade, entitlements, deficits and corporate priorities. In other words, he leaned into the working-class tilt of the GOP instead of simply exploiting it when it overlapped with standard GOP priorities.
As a result, Trump has deepened Republicans’ working-class base, first by bringing in even more White working-class voters, particularly in the Midwest, and then by adding non-White working-class voters, especially Hispanics. But that deeper working-class base presents challenges that the GOP appears ill-prepared to handle.
Start with the obvious fact that, if these are your voters, you have to deliver for them. The economy under Trump did perform well until the pandemic hit — better in wage and income terms than it has under Biden — and working-class voters give Trump credit for that. But in terms of policy, he did very little. The big economic policy achievement of his presidency was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which was unpopular with working-class voters and provided them with little direct benefit.
In part, this reflects the fact that Trump is not interested in policy issues and knows little about them. But it also highlights the lack of unity in Republican ranks about how to appeal to working-class voters. Some Republicans want to stick to traditional GOP approaches (such as cutting taxes on the wealthy); some want to press the accelerator on economic nationalism; some want a pro-worker industrial policy that breaks decisively with the legacy of Reaganism.
But there is no agreement. You can see it in the dueling manifestoes of the Freedom Conservatives and National Conservatives, who disagree about how strong a role government should play in supplementing and regulating the free market. You can see it in the complete lack of a party platform when Trump ran in 2020, which could well be replicated in 2024. And you can see it in the shambolic debates among the Republican presidential candidates that have been held so far this year — and the shenanigans of the Republican House last week, which now have left it leaderless.
The lack of a policy center leads Republicans to over-index on cultural issues, especially anything connected to “wokeness,” to the point where they seem extreme even when Democrats have adopted clearly unpopular positions. That obsessive focus on culture limits Republicans’ ability to capitalize on working-class economic discontent. The culture wars will get you…
Read More: Opinion | Republicans are the party of the working class. The result is chaos.