Republicans push 'blue-collar comeback' – but is
the party a true friend of the worker?
Donald Trump Jr with his partner Kimberly Guilfoyle at
CPAC on Friday. Trump attacked Biden’s reversal of his father’s immigration
policies and said: ‘Guess who gets hurt? Our low-wage earners.’
Richard
Luscombe in Miami
@richlusc
Sat 27 Feb
2021 19.32 GMT
Amid the
resurrection of “the big lie” about an election stolen from Donald Trump,
another deceptive theme has emerged at this weekend’s rightwing gathering of
the Conservative Political Action Conference: Republicans as the true party of
the blue-collar worker.
It was a
concept promoted variously over CPAC’s first two days by, among others, a
multimillionaire former governor who made a fortune in healthcare; the son of
Donald Trump, who lives in his own exclusive Florida club; and two firebrand US
senators with law degrees from Ivy League universities who oppose a universal
hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
One of
them, the Texas senator Ted Cruz, earlier this month flew his family to a
sunshine vacation at a five-star resort in Mexico to escape the deadly winter
blast back in his home state. At CPAC he asserted his alignment with America’s
working men and women.
“The
Republican party is not the party just of the country clubs; the Republican
party is the party of steel workers and construction workers, and pipeline
workers and taxi cab drivers, and cops and firefighters, and waiters and
waitresses, and the men and women with calluses on their hands who are working
for this country,” Cruz told the nation’s biggest annual gathering of
grassroots conservatives, just days after cutting short his Cancun holiday when
the scandal came to light.
“That is
our party, and these deplorables are here to stay.”
The CPAC
positioning to try to represent the Republican party as a champion of the
working class comes as Democratic president Joe Biden’s effort to raise the minimum
wage faces significant congressional roadblocks, including opposition from many
senior Republican figures.
Cruz, a
Harvard-educated lawyer and the beneficiary of substantial corporate campaign
donations, at least until many halted contributions in the wake of the 6
January Capitol riots, is a long-time opponent of what he has called the “bad
policy” concept of a minimum wage, and has said legislation to enforce it would
“kill American jobs”.
Josh
Hawley, the Missouri senator who last month joined his fellow Trump loyalist
Cruz in attempting to block the certification of Biden’s victory, was another
prominent CPAC speaker espousing working-class roots while opposing the new
president’s wage proposals.
“Where I
come from in Missouri, I grew up in rural Missouri, [a] small town right in the
middle of Missouri, it’s a working-class town full of good folks, working hard
to make it every day,” said Hawley, a Yale law school graduate.
“And I can
just tell you, where I grew up, we believe in citizenship because we’re proud
of it. We’re proud to be Americans,” he added in an address condemning
“powerful corporations” and “oligarchs” he accused of imposing a “radical left
agenda” on the United States.
Hawley,
considered a possible candidate in the race for the Republican Party’s 2024
presidential nomination if Trump does not run again, has also suffered
corporate backlash for his support of the former president’s election lies. He
proposed legislation this month that would exempt small businesses from paying
their employees a “burdensome” minimum wage.
On Saturday
at CPAC, the fealty continued to Trump, who was honored at the conference venue
this week by the installation of a large, gaudy statue that sparked the Twitter
hashtag #goldencalf.
“The
blue-collar comeback was the theme of our administration,” the Republican
Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty said in a panel discussion on industry during
which he praised “President Trump’s leadership” for job growth.
KT
McFarland, a conservative commentator who was briefly Trump’s deputy national
security adviser at the start of his administration, said she had a telephone
call with the former president on Friday night in which he allegedly outlined
the theme of his scheduled CPAC speech on Sunday.
“I think
that Donald Trump is not finished with this revolution,” she said, describing
how she called his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach and claiming Trump himself
picked up the phone.
“He said:
‘I’m going to talk about the future. I’m going to talk about how we win in
2022, how we take the White House back in 2024.’”
Trump’s
son, Donald Jr, told CPAC attendees earlier in the gathering that Biden’s
relaxation of Trump-era immigration measures and reopening of camps for migrant
youth would affect the very blue-collar workers Republicans are attempting to
covet.
“Where is
the outrage about an asinine immigration policy that is encouraging people to
bring children unaccompanied and otherwise into a country?” he said.
“Guess who
gets hurt? Our low-wage earners, who for the first time in modern history under
Donald Trump started seeing real wage growth.”
Rick Scott,
Florida’s junior senator and former governor, and a staunch Trump ally,
cautioned Republicans that abandoning the ex-present would alienate the party’s
base.
“We will
not win the future by trying to go back to where the Republican party used to
be. If we do, we will lose the working base that President Trump so animated,”
said Scott, a former healthcare executive whose personal net worth has been
estimated above half a billion dollars.
“We’re
gonna lose elections across the country and ultimately we’re gonna lose our
nation.”
Analysts
say there is nothing unusual in Republicans courting the working vote, even if
the choice of messenger might be questionable.
“From a
scholarly perspective, we’re really watching what seems to be a realignment of
the coalitions that are supporting each party, and particularly among
working-class white individuals,” said Dr Susan MacManus, emeritus professor of
political science at the University of South Florida.
“All you
have to do is to go look at the exit poll for the presidential election and
look at who are the largest supporters of Donald Trump, non-college educated,
working whites, pretty much.
“Is there a
disconnect between the wealth and education of leaders in both parties? Yes,
but this is where it’s coming from.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário