Republicans and conservatives have recently been hankering after the white working class. Surely, now that the liberal ruling class has abandoned them to their fate, the white working class will entertain an embassy from the right.
Videos By Rare
After all, conservatives actually care about the groups that liberals have wantonly used as cannon fodder for their political power project.
Unfortunately, the white working class defines itself in opposition to conservative ideas and values. Henry Olsen at The American Interest:
Today’s conservative movement increasingly emphasizes “getting ahead,” “owning your own business,” and economic dynamism as essential to the American dream. That’s what “you built that” was all about. For whites without any college education, however, these are largely alien concepts.
Working class whites see “their middle-class bosses as people who ‘worried all the time,’ [are] ‘cold and snobbish,’ and as ‘arrogant, very arrogant people.’ They [see] their work as ‘just a job,’ not a rewarding activity of itself.”
And, of course, the white working class is completely opposed to reform, i.e, reduction, of the entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. You can see that attitude in the recent threats from Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO.
Let me just say this one for the record. No politician — I don’t care the political party — will get away with cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits. Don’t try it. And this warning goes double for Democrats. We will never forget. We will never forgive. And we will never stop working to end your career[.]
Needless to say, the white working class is suspicious of free trade, “outsourcing, and high finance.”
In other words, the white working class has a pre-capitalistic worldview; it lives in the world of the tribe and the strong leader or patron. That’s what the Joe Soptic issue in 2012 was about. Joe reckoned that Mitt Romney, as owner of the steel plant where Joe once worked, had a lifetime obligation to look after him and his family.
So it doesn’t make any sense to try to cuddle up to the white working class. They live on another planet. Their pre-capitalistic mindset, after two centuries of economic growth that has transformed the lives of the workers, is delusional.
Regardless, the Republican Party has never flourished by “reaching out.” The Republican Party is an empty shell that insurgent moral and political movements invade and use to advance their agenda.
Start with the tea party — nobody saw that coming. Now the tea party is remaking the Republican Party. Same thing happened with the religious right and the same thing happened earlier with the Goldwater era.
Even the birth of the Republican Party fits this model. In the 1850s, People left the old Whig Party over slavery and formed the new Republican Party.
There’s nothing wrong with extending a friendly hand out to the white working class, but let’s not pretend that the results are promising.
Target number one for 2014 and beyond has got to be the middle-class millennials. They’ve been raised on liberal lies, from kindergarten through grad school to Comedy Central, their main source of news, and right now are attempting to start their adult lives in the worst job market in decades.
Hey millennials, it wasn’t Bush’s war or banksters or the Koch brothers, or racists, sexists, anti-choice fascists or gay bashers that wrecked your future. It was liberals. Liberals and their mortgages for people that couldn’t afford them, liberals and their money-for-nothing stimulus, liberals and their job-killing Obamacare, liberals and their quantitative easing lunch special for the one percent.
So please, invade the Republican Party and make it yours!
But the white working class is not a promising investment.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. See his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.