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GOP's 'Working Class' Agenda Is A Feeble Echo Of Fox News Obsessions

GOP's 'Working Class' Agenda Is A Feeble Echo Of Fox News Obsessions

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Political parties often respond to electoral defeat by spending time contemplating, with varying degrees of seriousness and success, why they lost and how they need to change their approach to win in the future. Following President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection, for example, the Republican Party commissioned and published a 100-page report which pinned the blame on Mitt Romney's weakness with Hispanic voters and called for a more benign policy toward undocumented immigrants. But the party backed off after a revolt by prominent right-wing media commentators, and in 2016, Donald Trump seized the GOP nomination and eventually the presidency with a nativist campaign that both halves of the 2012 Republican ticket criticized as racist.

GOP leaders are trying to avoid a similar scenario in the wake of Trump's 2020 defeat. They are circulating a memo that seeks to chart the party's course by keeping it closely aligned with the former president -- and with Fox News.

The document represents another datapoint in the ongoing merger of the right-wing media and Republican politics. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, Fox served as the GOP's communications arm. With Trump's ascent, the feedback loop between the network and the administration gave Fox unrivaled influence. Now, the Republican Party seems to have completely capitulated to the whims of its propagandists.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chair of the arch-conservative Republican Study Committee, writes in the memo that thanks to Trump, the GOP is now "the party supported by most working-class voters." He calls for a continued embrace of the former president, a rebranding as the "Party of the Working Class," and a focus on five issue areas he claims will "appeal to working-class voters" and bolster the GOP going into the 2022 midterm elections.

Banks' argument is muddled at best. Exit polls show that contrary to Banks' claim that Trump built a working-class coalition, he lost union households and voters making less than $100,000 while winning those making more by 12 points. What's closer to the truth is that Trump held a sizable advantage among white voters without college degrees, a demographic significantly overrepresented in the U.S. electoral system due to its geographic distribution.

But what Banks' memo does is keep the GOP on the same page as Fox's stable of right-wing stars. The agenda Banks highlights as a winner for the party is largely composed of cultural issues that receive heavy coverage on the network, rather than the political ones the network has downplayed. And like Fox's hosts, Banks is more invested in sneering at "Democrat elitism" than in describing policies that would concretely improve the lives of working-class voters.

An Issue Platform Ripped From Fox News

Banks is effectively urging his colleagues to try to bolster the GOP coalition not by proposing popular economic policies, but by bashing perceived members of the Democratic coalition -- migrants, college professors, corporations whose executives espouse views that Republicans disagree with, and the like -- thus providing news hooks for the ravenous right-wing noise machine.

Notably, one of Banks' five agenda items is "anti-wokeness." Banks does not bother to define what, exactly, "wokeness" is, though he calls it an "official part of the Democrat Party platform" which "encapsulates Democrats' elitism and classism" and ties it to "identity politics." But it amounts to turning the right-wing media's venomous, unending outrage cycle over culture war issues into a major portion of the party's platform. It's a big country -- there will always be someone for them to be angry about.


A denunciation of "regressive coronavirus lockdowns" -- a frequent subject of incendiary Fox segments -- also makes Banks' list of issues, under the culture-war frame of "Main Street vs. Wall Street" that floats government retaliation against companies that don't espouse right-wing values.

So does "Trade," which focuses not on actual policies but on Fox-friendly attacks on the Democratic Party's purported "coziness with China."

"Big Tech" is also on the menu, following years of dishonest claims about anti-conservative bias in that industry.

And after weeks of bigoted, cruel, inflammatory, and misleading Fox attacks on migrants seeking to cross the U.S. southern border, "Biden's Border Crisis" is part of the agenda.

You can see this synergy between the GOP and its communications apparatus playing out in real time.

After Georgia Republicans responded to Democratic victories in the state and Trump's false claims of a rigged election by passing a new voting law last week that curtails ballot access and shifts power to the overwhelmingly Republican state legislature, major corporations condemned it. Those companies are now coming under withering criticism from the right-wing press, stoked by calls from Republican politicians to use state power to target them for retribution.

What's Missing From This Vision For The GOP?

The Republican Study Committee traditionally focuses on a rigidly orthodox right-wing agenda of economic and budget policies. But Banks' memo includes little to no mention of taxes, spending, deficits, debt, or government regulations.

Those are startling omissions given Biden's recent passage of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, his subsequent unveiling of a $2 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan financed with tax increases on corporations, and forthcoming legislation which will address health care, education, and paid leave. Together, those bills amount to a historic investment in the material prospects of working-class Americans.

That tracks with the right-wing media's lackluster response to Biden's economic agenda. The commentators have opposed those bills, just like the GOP legislators who voted as a bloc against Biden's coronavirus legislation and have signaled similar treatment of his other packages.

But everyone involved seems more interested in talking about the likes of Dr. Seuss' purported cancellation than in challenging wildly popular Democratic economic policies. Fox commentators are more practiced at demagoguing about cultural issues, its audience has come to expect and enjoy hearing about those topics, and GOP officials would rather stoke those fires than try to fight them.

Indeed, the lines between right-wing media and political figures have become increasingly blurry. Congressional Republicans alternatively use Fox's coverage to bootstrap their political ambitions or seek to join the network or its cable news competitors. They openly acknowledge that they build their offices around communications, not legislation, or moonlight as podcasters.

This is no way to run a country. It's not good for one of the two major parties to be generating its platform based on the rantings of divisive demagogues who are paid for their ability to keep members of the base from changing the channel.

The GOP no longer has a Fox-watcher in the White House. But the party is as wedded as ever to the network's brand of politics.

Ted Cruz Cements His Position As The GOP’s Master Troll

Ted Cruz Cements His Position As The GOP’s Master Troll

On the Internet, a troll purposely inflames anyone he can to attract attention to himself, in hopes of wasting everyone’s time and energy. In the Republican Party, a troll does the same thing and he becomes a hero of the far right and a frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced on Monday that he had hired Paul Teller as his deputy chief of staff.

Teller — a favorite of outside conservative groups like Club for Growth — was swiftly fired from his position as executive director of the far-right Republican Study Committee in December after leaking conversations between House members.

Cruz’s new hire immediately won praise from Red State’s Erick Erickson, a leader in the movement to push the Republican Party further to the right by demanding continued standoffs in Congress and supporting primary challenges to incumbents, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) joined McConnell in speaking out against outside conservative groups in December, after several opposed the budget deal Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) negotiated with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA). By hiring Teller, Cruz cements his allegiance with the groups who championed his effort to shut down the government over Obamacare, which he was able to pull off with the help of the House GOP’s so-called “suicide caucus,” many of whom are members of the Republican Study Committee.

Cruz’s willingness to spurn his party’s leaders represents just one trick in his impressive arsenal of trolling tactics.

The Harvard-educated lawyer, who argued in front of the Supreme Court nine times, recently published a 10,000-word article in the Harvard Law Review that speaks to one of the darkest fantasies of the Tea Party movement: How the United Nations is coming to take our golf courses.

The Daily Beast‘s Ben Jacobs points out that Cruz is artfully speaking to the fear of a world government, a fringe idea that’s surprisingly widespread among the Republican base. If he spoke about his concerns about the UN on network television, he would be deemed “wacky” or “wackier.” So instead, he’s presenting them in one of the most prestigious law journals in the world.

The senator’s immense intellect gives him the ability to frame his extremism in acceptable venues. And it also enables him to make convenient arguments against the president that serve his agenda but crumble under scrutiny.


In an attempt to brand Obama as “imperial,” Cruz attacked the president for ignoring federal law in effectively allowing Colorado and Washington state to legalize marijuana.

This critique raised the hackles of Jacob Sullum at Reason.com, who points out that the federal government has virtually never prosecuted personal marijuana use. The Department of Justice has retained the right to crack down at any time, something the senator decided not to point out. But for now, the DOJ has decided to use its “limited investigative and prosecutorial resources to address the most significant threats in the most effective, consistent, and rational way” — as it always has.

But since Cruz lumped his concerns about marijuana legalization in with a screed against Obamacare, he knows that few in the audience he’s trying to reach will parse out what he’s saying.

The shutdown that the senator championed has led to new lows in popularity for the Republican Party.

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However, a big chunk of the GOP’s unfavorable rating comes from the party’s base.

In a recent YouGov/Economist tracking poll, 37 percent of Republicans viewed the members of their own party unfavorably, compared to 10 percent of Democrats. Many Republicans believe the party actually gave up too soon in the government shutdown standoff. They want constant, unwavering opposition and charges of lawlessness against the president.

Essentially, they want the party to be made up entirely of Ted Cruzes.

We’ve been telling you about the remarkable descent of Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) from Republican savior to Tea Party troll.

But Rubio’s problem is that compared to Cruz, he’ll always be a squish. He’s dabbled in bipartisanship and proposed “amnesty” for “illegals.” Even if the junior senator from Florida ultimately votes against his own bill, he’ll still be the kind of Republican Ted Cruz lives to crush, even if the senators agree on almost every conceivable issue.

This isn’t because Rubio is not intent on being disruptive or contentious or a “walking press release announcing a no vote.” It’s because he’ll always be in the shadow of a true master of the form.

Photo: jbouie via Flickr