Folks Before Kochs

To save itself, the Republican Party must finally put the working class ahead of the donor class.

.. While conservatives have traditionally emphasized the central importance of limited government, Trump has built his campaign around the promise of an unlimited government that will solve every problem that ails America, provided it is fully under his command.

..No candidate was more ideologically orthodox than Bobby Jindal, the government-slashing, hard-right governor of Louisiana, yet Trump ridiculed his campaign out of existence.
..Barack Obama’s rhetorical gifts mask the many ways in which he is a deeply conventional political figure, a man who trusts the wisdom of technocrats rather than seeking to overturn the established order.
.. One could argue that the Obama presidency rescued America’s upper classes from a more ferocious post-crisis backlash, at least for a time. The twin insurgencies of Trump and Sanders demonstrate that the anger is still there—that it was just waiting for the right person to conjure it up.
.. He is channeling the Republican id ..
.. Why can’t his GOP opponents convince Republican voters that they would do a far better job than Trump of defending middle-class economic interests? The answer is that they are trapped by the delusions of the donor class, and they can’t break free.
.. But whether or not they succeed, the GOP establishment must acknowledge that the Trump campaign has surfaced important and uncomfortable truths. Those truths can no longer be evaded.
.. There is only one way forward in the post-Trump era. The GOP can no longer survive as the party of tax cuts for the rich. It must reinvent itself as the champion of America’s working- and middle-class families.
.. For high-income Republicans, skilled immigrants are their colleagues, neighbors, and friends, and less-skilled immigrants provide them with the low-cost child care, restaurant meals, and other services that allow them to lead comfortable lives.
.. To unite the right, the GOP ought to embrace a simple immigration reform principle: The U.S. will only welcome immigrants who can pay their own way. Immigrants who earn high wages are less likely to need public assistance than those who earn low wages. They are in a better position to provide for their families, and their children are more likely to flourish as adults. Republicans should not shrink from advocating immigration policies that protect the interests of American workers. That means welcoming immigrants who are economically self-sufficient and who can help finance social programs for poor Americans—whether native- or foreign-born, of every racial and ethnic group—rather than relying on those social programs themselves.
.. Republicans might back a package of reforms that would encourage older Americans to work by slashing or eliminating their property taxes and that would ensure that all seniors receive a benefit that would keep them from falling into poverty, which is not currently the case.
.. Republican anti-poverty rhetoric often reeks of condescension. When George W. Bush spoke of compassion for the downtrodden, it was very clear that he meant well.
.. this proposal will still be difficult for supply-siders to bear. And that’s to the good. For too long, Republican have been excessively beholden to voters at the top of the income spectrum, and swearing off tax cuts for the rich would be an excellent way to prove that they’ve turned over a new leaf.
.. What defenders of the Republican status quo fail to realize is that unless the party speaks to the interests of working-class voters, they won’t just face slightly higher capital gains taxes or more wasteful spending under a Hillary Clinton administration. They will face a backlash from within that threatens to profoundly damage a party that, at its best, is a champion of the core social and economic institutions that made America great in the first place.