WASHINGTON – The Republican Party is showing signs of easing its trademark of fiscal conservatism in favor of a new populist approach, a potentially seminal shift as the party becomes more dependent on white blue-collar voters after Donald Trump’s presidency.
The last time Republicans were expelled from power in 2009, they took a blatant view of tax cuts and spending cuts to find their way out of the desert. Now the party is taking a different path, as ambitious figures seek to please voters by promoting a larger government safety net that includes money for families and an increase in the minimum wage.
The new approach comes at a time of profound economic difficulties – increasing income inequality and increasing health costs and university fees – aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic. The trend, if it continues, will test the long-standing alliance between the Republican Party and big business and has the potential to reshape the future of American politics.
“I hope there is support for workers to have a fair chance. Most Americans – they don’t want to be served. They would like a fair chance – to get a job, to be able to raise their family,” Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., He said.
Hawley’s rhetoric echoes progressives who say the government plays a more important role in providing equal economic opportunity. He has openly supported direct cash payments to Americans, even joining Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Recently in providing cash payments.
But despite his interest in fiscal liberalism, Hawley strongly breaks with Democrats by embracing Trump’s cultural conservatism, immigration skepticism and even his promotion of conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 elections – a potential new model for the broken.
“Republicans need to have a broader conversation about what we are going to do to support workers, working families in the middle of the country, where I come from, but across the country,” said Hawley. “I hope this is the direction we are taking.”
‘It’s time’
The party’s vote on Saturday to pass a $ 1.9 trillion Covid relief bill shows that economic differences still exist between the two parties. Even so, 48 Republicans voted in the process to spend $ 650 billion on measures, including direct money, unemployment benefits and childcare.
Perhaps no Republican will embody change like Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
He ran for president in 2012 with a tax reduction platform, raising the Social Security retirement age and cutting Medicare spending. He chose Paul Ryan as the running mate, the vanguard of traditional fiscal conservatism.
Now, Romney is leading efforts in his party to expand the safety net with a substantial pension for children and an increase in the minimum wage to $ 10 an hour, which is linked to tighter immigration enforcement. And he was one of the first advocates of direct payments in the midst of the pandemic.
“With respect to each of these plans, the effort is to make our safety net more effective,” Romney told NBC News, emphasizing that his plans are paid for.
In some ways, Romney is the opposite pole of Trump and the main antagonist – the only Republican who voted twice to find him guilty on charges of impeachment. But Trump’s pro-spending and anti-immigration attitudes have created space for the policies that Romney is advocating.
Case in point, his minimum wage proposal is co-sponsored by Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., One of the most conservative members of the chamber and considered a likely candidate for president.
“It’s time for the minimum wage to be raised. It hasn’t been raised in a long, long, long time,” said Romney. “But do it gradually and consistently with the rate of inflation – and combine it with immigration enforcement to ensure that we don’t have people entering illegally, taking jobs from those at the entry level.”
While Romney is hardly a favorite among conservative grassroots activists because of his extensive criticism of Trump, some were enthusiastic about the proposals, especially his child care plan. This plan would provide families with up to $ 4,200 per year per child, while cutting some existing rights programs.
The idea of using federal power to promote the nuclear family is at the heart of this shift in Republican Party policymaking, and several other leaders, like Hawley and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, are trying to lead in this area.
“I think Romney’s proposals are interesting,” Don Thrasher, president of the GOP of Nelson County in Kentucky, told NBC News. “I think that [GOP policy] it needs to address the inequality between what is going to corporate America and what is going to Main Street America. And I think part of what Romney is saying does that. “
Republican strategist Andy Surabian said some members of the Republican Party are moving away from their fiscal orthodoxy.
“There is much more openness to the basis for policy proposals that are more populist in nature and are less concerned with the type of conservative libertarian and orthodox economy in some ways,” he said. “But I also think it is very easy to overstate the extent to which this is true.”
He added that it is wrong to assume that conservative activists no longer care about spending and debt, or “that they are suddenly up for a lot of liberal economics” as a $ 15 national minimum wage.
‘Deficit hawkishness’
Notably, Republicans are talking less about national debt and are instead attacking Democrats’ Covid bill as a “liberal wish list”. And the Tea Party activists who took over the assault policy in 2009 with complaints about government spending are nowhere to be found. A recent Economist / YouGov survey showed that the project is supported by 66% of Americans, with only 25% against it. It is supported by almost four out of ten Republicans and 30 percent of Trump voters.
A Nebraska Republican, who asked to speak anonymously to provide a frank assessment of Republican messages, said that, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and unprecedented government relief, “much of the base” is more comfortable accepting “a broader economic policy role of the government “- as long as” it really serves to benefit the American citizen. “
“I think the days of a party exclusively dedicated to deficit falciculture are diminishing,” said this person. “I think you will see a much larger body of freshmen in 2022 moving in the middle on this issue.”
Some Democrats say this change shows that their Republican colleagues are looking for an identity after four years of Trump and after his defeat in re-election.
“The Republican Party is a snow globe now,” said Representative Mark Pocan, D-Wis. “They don’t know if they are QAnon, if they are tea, if they are fiscal conservatives, if they are a right-wing religious party – they don’t know. And during that time, you will see a lot of shit falling from the sky.”
But Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Said the decline in fiscal conservatism is good for the country.
“If this Trump era legacy is maintained within the Republican Party, it means that there will be much more room for negotiation with Democrats, because they will no longer be tied to root canal budgetary policies that are focused on inflicting more pain,” he said. .
However, some Republicans say Trump’s view of spending has drawn more voters to the party – mostly dissatisfied Democrats.
Trump “brought many people who were traditional Democrats to the party,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., A former Democrat who changed his party in 1994. “I just hope we will continue to bring more.”
Trump infused the party with a mix of economic populism and nativism that many Republicans initially resisted. Now, even after his defeat, he continues to influence the party.
“Probably one of Trump’s biggest changes was taking a more populist approach, especially to help people,” Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., a former Trump critic who has become a ferocious ally, said in an interview. “I think it’s a good thing.”
Sahil Kapur reported from Washington. Allan Smith reported from New York.