Will Trump’s Welfare Chauvinism Transform the Republican Party?
The coming realignment…or not.
Among the urgent questions facing American democracy, perhaps none is more paramount that what a post-Trump Republican Party looks like. Will the party embrace Trumpism and its sickening white supremacy and authoritarianism, or will it transform itself in order to meet the increasingly populist challenge from the left? Some say why bother: with inevitable demographic changes underway, the Republicans face disaster sooner rather than later.
All prophecies that foresee a party doomed to oblivion should be taken with a grain of salt, however. After the GOP lost the presidency in 2008 and 2012, the consensus view on much of the left and the right was a similarly fatalistic one. Unless Republicans followed the wise counsel of their infamous 2013 autopsy report and moved to the center on issues from immigration to gay rights, the argument went, the party would be locked out of the White House for decades to come or cease to exist.
Enter Mr. Trump. Now that a brand of nationalist populism (read: bucking Reaganite policies on immigration and trade, deploying a racist politics appealing to fear of demographic and cultural change) has dislodged the Republican’s 2013 strategy to broaden the party’s appeal by softening it’s tone, the future of the party is anything but etched in stone.
The language of party realignment has seeped into the coverage of the recent November elections, as many commentators witness the movement of affluent suburbanites to the Democrats as the sign of a new era of inter-party competition. More important to the question of realignment — not to minimize the significance of Philadelphia or Kentucky suburbs turning blue — is the outcome of the 2020 election. Among the leading Democratic candidates, many are proposing policies which, if enacted, would transform the American economy. If a progressive champion rides a blue wave into unified Democratic government — a big if — the question which the GOP must ask itself is no longer “Should Mitt Romney have pressed for immigration reform?” The question, rather, becomes the fundamental character of the party itself, specifically along the fractured line of class politics.
Calls for the GOP to reform itself in order to meet the great challenges of today are often framed as an exhortation to leave the nostalgic politics of Reagan and lean into the Modern Gilded Age’s class war.
Yes, a post-Trump Republican party must reckon with the inevitable decline in white evangelical voters as a percentage of the electorate. It also cannot ignore the formation of a new base that is less educated and more working class than the coalition that voted for Romney in 2012. Whether or not a post-Trump GOP reacts to these changes by triangulating with the Democrats on the economy (think of Bill Clinton’s ‘Third Way’ response to the Reagan Revolution and Eisenhower’s embrace of FDR’s New Deal) — or whether it falls back to Reaganism — defines the next chapter of party realignment.
Calls for the GOP to reform itself in order to meet the great challenges of today are often framed as an exhortation to leave the nostalgic politics of Reagan and lean into the Modern Gilded Age’s class war. Any war requires two sides, and the way in which the Republicans construct their theory of class war in this time of skyrocketing inequality and technological upheaval will have serious ramifications for the permanence of our democracy.
While the politics of Mr. Trump has sparked the shift of white, working class voters to the Republicans, it has not been a politics heavy on class itself. Mr. Trump’s economic nationalism pits the forgotten men and women, the “poorly educated,” and deserving retirees against hordes of dangerous immigrants draining the welfare state, “globalists” whose capitulation to the Chinese wrecked American industry, Muslim refugees conflated with Islamic terrorists, and the politically correct elite who look down on cultural conservatism. In other words, Mr. Trump’s theory has blamed the racial and cultural “Other” for the consequences of inequality and deindustrialization, not the ultra-wealthy, powerful corporations, or Wall Street, the traditional enemies of class warfare.
As inevitable demographic changes occur, a class politics that places race and culture at its center rather than class itself poses an imminent threat to the basic structures of democracy. A Democratic party that puts class at the center of the war wants to get big money out of politics. A Republican party that puts race and culture at the center of the war wants to get the racial and cultural “Other” out of politics. The result: a terrifyingly racist and undemocratic politics of Send Her Back. It is a logic that accelerates voter suppression and intimidation, racial gerrymandering, and voter purges, all attempts to win through the suffocation of democracy.
The Future of Trumpism
Although far from coherent nor consistently applied, the particular class war ideology animating Mr. Trump — right-wing nationalist populism — has been hotly debated, seen by some as an agent of transformative change and by others as a passing phenomenon. In a quarrel which began even before the nomination in 2016 was secured, so-called Never Trumpers and Trump-skeptics have engaged in a bitter argument over the staying-power of Trumpism. Some view Mr. Trump’s faux brand of populism as a cruel and momentary pause from the Reagan consensus. To a large degree, they have a point. The networks of conservative opinion-shapers and policy wonks in Washington, along with think-tanks from AEI to the Cato Institute, have not fully embraced the policies of the President. In this way, much of the institutional forces behind the agendas of all Republican administrations since Reagan have not lined up behind Mr. Trump and are broadly skeptical of Trumpism’s staying power.
Some view Mr. Trump’s faux brand of populism as a cruel and momentary pause from the Reagan consensus. To a large degree, they have a point.
Conversely, the emerging “Trump is Great” (TIGR) block argues that the ideas which animated Mr. Trump’s campaign, and to a lesser degree his governing priorities, represent a necessary paradigm shift to reflect a Republican voter base increasingly rural and working class rather than suburban and wealthy. As of now, the TIGR wing has not built a think tank devoted to churning out Trumpian policy, nor does it claim a majority of Republican representatives. Changing the GOP’s rhetoric has proven far easier for Trump than transforming the party’s dominant economic philosophy.
Mr. Trump leans heavily on the conservative Heritage Foundation and “establishment” congressional leadership for policy, leading many observers to conclude that while Trump has certainly bucked the Republican establishment on issues like trade and immigration, certain tenets of Reaganism, like tax cuts and deregulation, have remained central to Mr. Trump’s policies in office. Quietly, a few key TIGR figures have begun to sketch a different direction for a post-Trump GOP that breaks further from the Reagan consensus. They, unlike Trump, plunge head first into a class war politics with less overt emphasis on race, more on class.
The Rumblings of a New Class War
In a recent address at the Catholic University of America, a U.S. Senator lambasted policies that incentivize stock buybacks, denounced the financial sector’s growing share of corporate profits, and called out the political right for having “neglected the rights of workers to share in the benefits” of their work. Echoing this critique of soaring economic inequality, another Senator declared earlier this year that over the last four decades “our economy has worked best for those at the top: the wealthy, the well-educated.”
Quietly, a few key TIGR figures have begun to sketch a different direction for a post-Trump GOP that breaks further from the Reagan consensus.
That’s not Elizabeth Warren talking. Rather, those statements come from Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both Republicans detaching themselves from what, in their view, is a flawed Washington consensus that has dominated American politics for decades.
To Mr. Rubio, both parties are beholden to shareholder primacy, a theory which in practice has placed shareholder profits before investments in workers. Mr. Hawley retorts against a consensus “that reflects the interests not of the American middle, but of a powerful upper class and their cosmopolitan priorities.” For their attempts at crafting a more fleshed-out Republican populism than that of President Trump, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Hawley’s speeches have at turns received surprising praise from the left, although Mr. Rubio’s attempt at tying religious doctrine to economic policy has been criticized for ignoring aspects of Catholic teachings, and Jewish leaders in Missouri have called on the Mr. Hawley to apologize for his use of the phrase “cosmopolitan elite,” a term with a history as an anti-semitic dog-whistle. The National Review has criticized both men for fanciful, reductionist attacks against unbridled capitalism.
Nonetheless, both Senators stand to play prominent roles in shaping the post-Trump landscape on the right. Darel E. Paul, a professor of political science at Williams College, argues that with a realignment of wealthy voters towards the Democrats, the Republicans are at a crossroads. They can either revert back to a pre-Trump party which focuses on the party’s commitments to tax cuts, liberal immigration policies, and welfare state retrenchment, or the party can “follow the lead of Senators Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio” in order to reshape the Republicans into a party of the working- and middle-classes.
Perhaps President Trump’s version of class politics has already begun such a transformation. But how? The now-redundant story is that candidate Trump saw an opening for an outsider who professed hard-right anti-immigration policies on the one hand and populist appeals to working class voters on the other. He noticed, or perhaps stumbled upon, an appeal for welfare chauvinism, a tactic familiar to right-wing populists in Europe. Welfare chauvinism is a political program that supports the welfare state, yet restricts the benefits to certain groups over others — notably to the “deserving” native-born over the burdensome immigrant.
In 2016, Mr. Trump ran as a welfare chauvinist, running to the left of his Republican rivals on economics. He openly questioned the Reagan era consensus of tax cuts for the wealthy and reduced entitlements for everyone else. He consistently promised not to cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, all the while calling to restrict such benefits for immigrants. He falsely tweeted that “illegal immigrant households receive far more in federal welfare benefits — than ‘native [sic] American households.” In a speech two days before the election, Trump painted himself as the savior of the welfare state, claiming that he would protect Social Security and Medicare while Ms. Clinton would “destroy” both programs and “give your benefits to illegal immigrants.”
In office, Mr. Trump has unquestionably waged war against immigrants’ access to public resources, framing his efforts as necessary measures to control costs for native-born Americans. The Trump administration’s attempt to bar green-cards from those in need of certain public benefits was struck down, but recently Mr. Trump issued a proclamation banning entry to immigrants who demonstrate an inability to afford healthcare. During the signing of the proclamation, Trump signaled how welfare chauvinism continues to define his electoral strategy:
One of the most disturbing proposals from left-wing politicians involves draining your healthcare to finance the open borders that we just discussed. That’s how they want to finance it. Leading Democrats have pledged to give free healthcare to illegal immigrants. They put foreign citizens who break our laws and endanger our country — they put them way ahead of American citizens like you who obey our laws.
But a defender of native-born Americans’ public benefits he is not.
Whereas European right-wing populist parties often deliver on their promises to beef up the welfare state for their “own people,” the Republicans under Mr. Trump continue their quest to gut the Affordable Care Act and have proposed budgets that shrink mandatory spending for programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). For Mr. Trump, welfare chauvinism is not a central governing philosophy. As a result, he has won the confidence of small government conservatives worried that he would use government to expand benefits. All in all, President Trump’s welfare chauvinism remains more electoral strategy than policy agenda.
A Dog-whistling Realignment?
It would be downright foolish, however, to say that Trump’s policies have not taken on chauvinistic qualities and favored particular groups over others. The Trump Administration’s bailouts for farmers affected by his trade war with China, for example, were disproportionately white. The only major law passed under Mr. Trump, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, helped the pocketbooks of mostly white Americans. He has cut-off immigration from majority-Muslim countries and proposed further measures that would limit both Hispanic and black African immigrants, yet declared that he wants more immigrants from countries like Norway.
Whether Trump’s brand of faux populism and sporadic, racist welfare chauvinism will redefine the GOP long-term is unclear. Senator Hawley certainly thinks something is happening, telling reporters on the eve of his victory over Claire McCaskill that “we’re in the middle of a political realignment…It’s comparable to a century ago when you had a complete change in political coalitions, and I think President Trump is driving much of that. We’re seeing that happen. We’re right in the midst of it.” Despite Hawley’s triumphalism, recent polling indicates that a clear majority of party voters continue to identity as “Reagan Republicans” rather than “Trump Republicans,” although much of the intellectual energy in the party comes from the Trump-style nationalists.
[W]e’re in the middle of a political realignment…It’s comparable to a century ago when you had a complete change in political coalitions.
The populism of conservative media figures like Tucker Carlson, and events like the National Conservatism Conference, demonstrate how the realignment away from Reagan is happening now, yet maintains devotion to a dog-whistle politics that fights for, in Hawley’s words, “The Great American Middle.” Not too far off from the “Silent Majority” of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. One cannot ignore the perpetuation of a politics fueled by racial and cultural fears, but one must also acknowledge that the rhetoric of Senators like Hawley and Mr. Rubio show a party more interested in talking openly about class and inequality.
Regardless of the electoral outcome in 2020, speculation around the eventual heir to Trump, and therefore the Republican party, will only continue to intensify. Whether the eventual successor to Trump maintains his overtly racist, welfare chauvinist streak — or whether they take a tepid lurch towards a dog-whistling class politics — is anyone’s guess, however.
