And however imperfect he might be, Cruz would do more to advance the elite plan to remake the GOP for the 21st century than Trump would—especially if Cruz loses in November. His defeat could then be pinned on his being too conventionally right-wing, too Trump-like himself, and on Trump voters bolting the party. That would give the establishment all the more reason to call for a return to the policies associated with Rubio and the 2012 Republican “autopsy.” The failure of Cruz’s Reagan-vintage conservatism would clear the way for a new kind of right in 2020.
.. Trump is not only making promises to American workers that by opposing trade deals he’ll keep good jobs in this country, he’s also bidding for votes by refusing to make cuts to popular government programs. From Social Security to federal funding for Planned Parenthood, voters who want tax dollars to provide services are hearing a pitch from Trump. It’s clear enough where this leads: to a Republican Party that bids with the Democrats to offer voters the most benefits. And if the bidding starts among working-class whites, that doesn’t mean that’s where it will end. If the dream of elite Republicans is to win blacks and Hispanics by appealing to values, the Trump strategy may ultimately be to appeal to their economic interests in much the same way as Democrats have traditionally done.
.. In simple terms, the elite Republican plan is for the GOP to be a multi-ethnic party whose economics are those of the elite itself; the Trump plan is for the GOP to be a party that politically plays ethnic blocs against one another, then bids to bring them together in a winning coalition by offering economic benefits for each group.
.. In a healthy party these factions, Trump and anti-Trump, might learn from one another, the anti-Trump side coming to recognize how it has failed the white working class and the need to provide for it once more; the Trump side acknowledging the demographic realities of the 21st century and the toxicity of strident identity politics.
.. The irony of Cruz’s position is that the party’s future now hinges on how well he can do with an orthodox conservative message drawn from its past.
The 2016 Republican Race So Far
The supposedly “strongest field” of Republican candidates in decades was full of no-hopers, has-beens, and also-rans that weren’t going to get close to winning the nomination, and this was fairly obvious from the start. The “top tier” of Walker, Bush, and Rubio was also not nearly so formidable as it was made out to be a year ago, and all of them flopped when they were put to the test.
.. Especially for those “top-tier” candidates, one of the biggest weaknesses was being too wedded to Bush-era ideological commitments and to George W. Bush personally. That not only put them at odds with many Republican voters, but it also convinced many more that they were simply out of touch and clinging to discredited or outdated policies.
.. The three remaining candidates are very different from one another, but one thing they have in common is that they have all to one degree or another flouted some aspect of party and/or movement orthodoxy.
.. The Bush-era throwbacks and retreads failed in no small part because they wouldn’t or couldn’t do the same, but instead kept trying to defend the agenda and legacy of one of the worst presidents of the last century.
Tax Cuts Can’t Motivate the Republican Base Anymore
It wasn’t just the level of taxes, which was high; it was also how that level interacted with inflation.
.. In an era of double-digit inflation, this was a big problem, and it focused people intently on how much they hated their taxes. It also gave people the feeling that the government was going to go on taking more and more, while delivering less and less in the way of either public order or economic growth. That made people well down the income distribution very receptive to promises of tax cuts.
.. it’s going to be very hard to get those bottom three or four quintiles interested in your tax reform, because their income taxes are already negligible. And since that group has 80 percent of the people in the country, that means it’s going to be very hard to get elected on a platform of tax cuts.
.. Moreover, Republicans now have the same problem that Democrats and Republican New-Deal-Lite types had in 1979: they’ve delivered on the tax cuts, and the tax cuts did not deliver on the fabulous promises of economic growth.
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.