Will the GOP Become the Party of Blue-Collar Conservatism?
Will the GOP Become the Party of Blue-Collar Conservatism?
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From the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt onward through to the 1990s, the
Democrats had long been considered the party of the working class. That
perception lingered long after the fact that by the 1990s, they had more
accurately become the party of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, often
embracing policies at variance with their traditional blue-collar
supporters. As Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen, and Jie Chen outline in a
paper sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking: "Within the
Democratic Party, the desires of party leaders who continue to depend on big
money from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, health insurers, and other power
centers collides [sic] head on with the needs of average Americans these
leaders claim to defend." So the Democratic Party, a historically
center-left political grouping, has increasingly embraced a neoliberal
market fundamentalist framework over the past 40 years, and thereby
facilitated the growth of financialization (whereby the influence and power
of a country's financial sector become vast relative to the overall
economy).
Donald Trump exploited that shift during his 2016 campaign: Not only did he
proclaim his love for "the poorly educated," but he also campaigned as an
old Rust Belt Democrat-not only by attacking illegal immigration and
offshoring, but also coming out against globalization, free trade, Wall
Street, and especially Goldman Sachs.
As president, of course, Trump has proven incapable of "walking the walk,"
even as he continued to speak about "draining the swamp" and eliminating
business as usual in Washington. But there is increasing evidence suggesting
that some of the more ambitious and opportunistic politicians in the GOP are
seeking to exploit the material abandonment of working-class voters by the
Democrats. Both Senators Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio are trying to move the
party in a more pro-worker direction, championing a new kind of blue-collar
conservatism that is supportive of unions and policies that emphasizes the
"dignity of work." Likewise, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has recently
introduced a tax rebate for lower-income Americans to offset the tariffs
President Trump has proposed on Chinese goods-essentially an annual payment
from the federal government to citizens to offset any increased cost in
consumer goods that might arise from Trump's proposed tariffs, thus
neutralizing the economic impact, and countering the political argument that
the president's trade war on Chinese goods ultimately represents a tax on
American consumers. As Henry Olsen notes in the Washington Post:
"Cotton's approach addresses both the economic and political challenges
arising from Trump's tariffs. Economically, giving the revenue back to
average Americans offsets the expected rise in prices they will face as a
result of the tariffs. Consumer spending, which was feared would decline in
response to the price hikes, would now likely stay high: Why cut back in
spending when you're not losing any money? That would keep the economy
strong."
In other words, it's a tax-time Universal Basic Income.
Cotton's proposals would augment a little-discussed feature emerging now in
the U.S. labor market, as CNBC's Jeff Cox writes: for the first time in this
cycle (which started in 2009), "the bottom half of earners are benefiting
more than the top half-in fact, about twice as much, according to
calculations by Goldman Sachs," using data from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. More recently, Derek Thompson of the Atlantic cites additional
work by labor economist Nick Bunker, who makes the case that "wage growth is
currently strongest for workers in low-wage industries, such as clothing
stores, supermarkets, amusement parks, and casinos. And earnings are growing
most slowly in higher-wage industries, such as medical labs, law firms, and
broadcasting and telecom companies." Absent a significant growth slowdown,
these workers might increasingly identify their economic self-interest with
Republicans, not Democrats, particularly given the increasingly
restrictionist stance the GOP is adopting on immigration, which will further
tighten the labor market structurally and enhance the relative bargaining
position of American blue-collar workers.
The one lingering question is whether or not this trend will yet supersede
the power and influence of the GOP's historic corporate constituencies,
notably oil, mining and chemical companies, Big Pharma, tobacco, the arms
industry, and civil aviation. On the face of it, this could well prove to be
a tall order. But it is conceivable if trade policy is ultimately rendered
subordinate to national security concerns, as increasingly appears to be the
case today. In the words of Michael Lind, all it would take is a national
developmental industrial strategy predicated on sustaining U.S. military
supremacy: "to identify and promote not specific companies but key
'dual-use' industries important in both defense and civilian commerce." That
would seem to be a more likely scenario for the GOP, one that would build on
Trump's steady inroads into the Democratic Party's traditional blue-collar
constituencies, while simultaneously catering to the party's strong links to
national defense interests.
Although a military-industrial strategy might run counter to some of the
interests of the party's traditional corporate backers (such as Charles
Koch), it would likely prove hugely beneficial to America's manufacturing
heartland, particularly the country's disaffected blue-collar workers.
Historically, these workers have been Democrats, but their livelihoods have
been decimated by decades of trade liberalization and other neoliberal
policies. As Lind points out, a national industrial policy based on the
model of Alexander Hamilton but married to "Cold War 2.0" could, therefore,
consolidate the GOP's efforts to become more of a party of the working
class. And such a policy is not historically anomalous: during the original
Cold War, free trade and globalization were always subject to the
constraints of containing the expansion of Soviet-led communism. A large
chunk of the world under the enemy sphere of influence was off-limits to
American trade and capital.
Today, even with the overriding influence of the Koch brothers, and the
Mercer family, a number of Republicans are geopolitical hawks first, and
economic libertarians second. They increasingly see that it makes no sense
to go to war against wage earners while claiming to protect the same wage
earners from Chinese competition, especially if Beijing becomes the new
locus of an emerging Cold War 2.0. Furthermore, if they are in safe,
rock-solid GOP districts, they are less vulnerable to a primary attack from
corporate interests antithetical to those positions. As geo-economics is
increasingly remarried to geopolitics (as it was during the original Cold
War), "blue-collar conservativism" will likely gain increasing policy
traction in certain conservative circles, even though Republicans still have
a ways to go before they can fully shift their party's agenda toward a
modern-day equivalent of "Bull Moose" progressivism.
Donald Trump is, first and foremost, a wrecker, as opposed to a builder.
Arguably, that is one of the things that got him elected in the first place.
But he has set the stage for a further political realignment, especially as
more educated whites and elites migrate to the Democratic Party, and
traditional Southern populists reside in the GOP. There are very few Fritz
Hollings types left in the party, whose views on trade, immigration and
manufacturing are closer to the Democrats' historic New Deal constituencies.
This theory, though, is not watertight, and new coalitions are still very
much in flux. But as things stand today, ironically, the Democrats now have
trade and open borders policies that are closer to those of the old
Reagan/Bush Republicans and libertarians such as the Koch brothers, while
the GOP policy under Trump is gravitating toward the old positions of the
AFL/CIO on both trade and immigration, a policy combination that makes the
embrace of a kind of blue-collar conservatism even more credible for the
GOP. Furthermore, as trade issues (especially in regard to China) are
increasingly conflated with national security concerns, the GOP may
ultimately decide to build on Trump's attempts to re-domicile key supply
chains back to the U.S. From the national security hawk perspective, this
will ensure that strategic industries necessary to sustain American military
power remain on home shores, even if this conflicts with the principles of
free trade, limited non-interventionist government. Sustaining permanent
production on U.S. soil, not just innovation in America and production
elsewhere, would be profoundly favorable to blue-collar workers (hitherto
among the biggest casualties of globalization) and likely consolidate the
GOP's efforts to become the future party of the American working class,
unless of course the Democrats suddenly and unexpectedly reclaim their New
Deal legacy.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent
Media Institute.
Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator.
Marshall Auerback /
