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Harsanyi: The GOP Has a Populist Problem
David Harsanyi has a new opinion piece in the Federalist where he asserts that the GOP has a populist problem. Like many that have been analyzing the disappointing GOP election results in last week’s elections, Harsanyi is putting out an opinion on why favorable conditions are not resulting in more wins.
His thesis is that the GOP messaging/candidates are too populist. The cause is that the candidates reflect the desires of the Trumpian base, but the policies are not appealing to the rest of the electorate, and the Trumpian base only comes out to vote for Trump.
David says:
Other than some platitudes about Bidenomics, what was the GOP’s economic message? They don’t have one. The right’s misplaced obsession with “working class” voters has led to a watered-down, leftist approach to the economy that creates a muddled, incoherent rhetorical mess on an issue Republicans should be dominating.
In most places, the working class is shrinking, and the middle class keeps growing. People are moving out of the Rust Belt to Nevada and Florida, and yet a big chunk of the GOP is reluctant to press on tax cuts and deregulation for fear of sounding too much like “Reagan” — the worst sin one can apparently commit these days.
Most suburban families are dispositional conservatives. Many are not strongly ideological. They certainly won’t be galvanized in large numbers by “based” dunks on libs. And yet, so many Republican candidates tie themselves to the aesthetic and tonal qualities admired by the new right social media grifter class. These people live in a hermetically sealed political bubble.
I think he has a point about many GOP politicians ignoring bread-and-butter issues, because they are afraid to go against Trump and his base. It is short-sighted to focus on the Trump base, because in 12 months Trump’s last campaign will be over. However, I think Harsanyi goes to far with his stark contrast of “Reaganism” and “Populism” defining a strict dichotomy. Depending on which taxes are being cut, I would say all the “Reagan” issues listed (tax cuts, deregulation, judges, law and order) are really populist issues. He overstates the policy divide.
Moreover, the new right took all the wrong lessons from 2016. Trump’s greatest victories were completely in line with post-1980s Reagan conservatism — a tax cut, deregulation, constitutionalist judges, and tougher stances on crime and lawlessness. But when Trump won Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016, right-wing institutions convinced themselves that populist messaging was the future.
That Harsanyi chooses to use the derogatory “populist” label tells us that he has corporatist/establishment leanings. What is populism if not a government of/by/for the people and an opposition to elitism and government of/by/for the ruling class? Despite his bias, I do think he has a point about GOP candidates not forging their own voice on Americanist polices. Nobody can be Trump except Trump. He is a unicorn. It is a mistake to depend on the Trump base in an off-year election and candidates should seek to appeal to more of the electorate. The Democrats have painted themselves into a neo-communist/neo-Marxist corner, and the GOP, with proper messaging, should be able to win a lot of votes.
Published in Domestic Policy
Well, time to hold your noses and vote, GOP.
Reagan as something other than a populist is a a bit of historical revisionism of the worst kind. He wasn’t a populist like Trump is a populist, but there are many ways to be populist.
Most likely. But even some people with populist leanings have picked up the idea that “populist” means “people we don’t like.”
I will never understand why it is supposed to be a dirty word.
The major thing that Harsanyi either doesn’t understand, or pretends not to understand, is that the growth of Woke suburbanites outstrips the growth of traditional suburbanites, and most of the ‘non-ideological’ ones value their reputation among their progressive peers more than they do their non-critical economic interests. This makes strategic or targeted messaging on economic issues toward that demographic very difficult, especially when there is no trust among the base (which is somehow expected to go along with their own marginalization) that the implied incrementalism that goes along with this strategy will be undertaken in good faith. And then there’s the matter of Oligarchic ‘Woke Capitalism’, and the implied acceptance of its continued domination of cultural discourse (“No, you mustn’t attack Disney, what will cliques of suburban wine moms think!?” or “no, attacking Woke corporations means picking winners and losers!”).
Better.
I recently listened to the Democrat governor of Kentucky bray about how he withstood the on slot of Republican Super Pac money to win re-election. But, when you compare his spending against his rival, he spent 150% what the Republican did.
Still, his audience ate it up like he was the triumphant underdog.
Right, because Dems are always victims.
I’m glad you made this a post @dong . I read the Harsanyi piece and thought he was off on his premise, but was worth discussing. I usually find his writing interesting and never miss his podcast with Mollie Hemmingway.
It seems to me that “Tax Cuts” get conflated with Reagan’s Supply Side economics, the premise of which was that by lowering tax rates and regulations, those reductions in tax revenues would be offset by increased economic activity – that was proven.
It’s the spending that never was reduced, nor (enough) of the regulations that drive that spending. So from a Populist viewpoint, I’d argue that the Tax Reduction vein has been tapped. The only spending being talked about being reduced is Social Security & Medicare. The bureacratic class and those VA, DE and MA suburbanites around DC – well, they’ll never get their haircut.
Those Blue Collar jobs remaining, the ones not shipped oversees, will have continue to face downward wage pressure from this unending flood of unchecked legal (H1-B Visas) and illegal immigration. That low-cost housekeeper/nannies all those suburbanites want, have husbands/boyfriends/brothers that compete for those Blue Collar service & manufacturing jobs that can’t (or haven’t been yet) be shipped out. Many of them do a great job and are great workers but that downward wage pressure won’t be relieved. Sorry – the reflexive appetite that I once had for things like ‘Right to Work’ legislation are gone. Not until that GD border is shut down and mass deportations have occured. If these suburbanites think they get homo marriage, Tranny Madness, Abortion on Demand and restoration of the SALT Deductions and an open border? Piss off – no more common cause with that.
The next leg of the Reagan stool – ‘strong national defense’. Well, a great deal of the justification for that has been squandered with the GWOT and its dissapointing results and these ever continuing conflicts that require tax dollars (or really deficit spending bonds) to maintain our defense industry profits. I wouldn’t have felt that way 15 years ago. That trust has been shattered.
I can’t recall the third leg of that stool, but they’re all broke.
I’d be curious what type of candidates he thinks will restore GOP fortunes. At the Presidential level, The Trump/DeSantis wing is the center of gravity and I don’t see that shifting anytime soon. I’m encouraged by that.
We need ‘points on the board’ in DC and in Red States. Not just some “R” in the seat, actual rollback of the administrative state. That will improve our fortunes.
He’s right that the GOP doesn’t have an economic message. Or any message.
But he seems to contradict himself in the very next sentence by talking about the right’s “misplaced obsession with working class voters.”
If they do have an obsession, it’s in trying to rid themselves of the icky working class. But addressing the working class would seem to be an “economic message.” So first he says they haven’t got one, then he says they’ve got the wrong one. A “leftist” one, whatever that means. Is it automatically leftist to care about the working class? Really?
Is Harsanyi revealing himself to be another elitist who doesn’t give a crap about the working class? For whom “conservatism” is tax cuts and deregulation and nothing else? Great way to get votes there, guy
Social/cultural conservatism. Which aligns with populism today. So I guess Harsanyi isn’t interested in that. Icky, icky populists.
“We the people” is a statement of populism. The basis of our entire Constitution. The foundation of our country.
Hatred of populism is unfortunately common here on Ricochet.
What does this mean? Most suburban families are hopelessly stuck in ‘the current thing’. The moms are watching The View dad is watching Jimmy Kimmel the kids in their early twenties still at home are on their phones, woke and stupid.
That’s pretty much the problem. How do you persuade this group? With Mitt Romneyesqe posturing and promises? These people are getting blasted by Democrat talking points and mockery 24/7, while the GOP allows their candidates to be grilled by NBC partisans on national television in the form of a reality show disguised as a debate.
The abortion issue is a huge factor in the liberal suburban world of soccer moms. They are viscerally afraid of Lindsay Graham and of Ron DeSantis implementing a 6 week limit.
They won’t be ‘galvanized’ by very much of anything, anyway. The author has correctly stated they aren’t especially ideological.
This demographic is basically lost until more balance is achieved in mass media across the board. These people don’t have easy access to any ‘dunks’ on libs. They’re watching dunks on Republicans most of the time.
So many? Who? Vivek and Trump? The latter who is somehow leading all the others combined in polls?
What “aesthetic and tonal qualities”? Does he mean Vivek’s calling out NBC, or Ronna McRomney? Or does he mean Nikki’s use of the word ‘scum’ for another Republican?
The author apparently is unaware that the working class is where the next Republican votes have been coming, and the suburban voters are not a demographic that can produce much movement. Appealing to this group ( if they even can) will garner only a slight improvement while they will lose a large number of un-galvanized working class whites, hispanics and blacks.
Have you met or talked to a suburban family lately? Our wives aren’t watching The View and us dads sure as heck aren’t watching Jimmy Kimmel. We don’t have time for that. We’re busy with work and our kids. We’re busy making sure that the kids get to soccer practice, or basketball practice, or karate, or piano lessons, or any of the other 100 things that take up our lives. Suburban families are dealing with inflation and figuring out how to afford the current economy. If we’re of a certain age, then we are also likely helping elderly parents too.
Suburban families aren’t obsessed with “the current thing”. We’re just trying to get through the day and focused on our families and our community.
Good points, @DonG. More cuts FTA:
1. AFAIK, rejection of “Reaganism” is most pungent when Democrat-Lite R’s tell us that he loved Democrats and that Reagan was Mr. Go-along-to-get-along, which is flat-out not true. We still want tax cuts and lower spending, but those have been off the table since the Bush 41 administration. Remember that breaking his “no new taxes” pledge was done in order to avoid spending cuts! We’re making do with what’s left.
2. “Trump’s problems with the Justice Department” is one way to describe it. So is “rampant third-world partisan politicization of the highest law enforcement body in the land,” with well-deserved references to Orwell, Cheka, Star Chamber, and so forth. The all-government coordination against Trump (and his supporters) is mighty close to bills of attainder, given the hasty second impeachment and political imprisonment of conservatives.
3. And here it is — “Matt Gaetz’ hurt feelings” is a smooth-brain way to wrap up the wounded pride of the business-as-usual caucus. Speaker Johnson may fizzle, but this is the first break with the Boehner/Ryan/McCarthy cabal in a generation. Has Harsanyi always carried water for the EstabliCons, or is this specific to not liking Gaetz?
4. This strikes me as wishful remembering. When has the Republican party ever featured a “coherent, holistic aproach to politics”? That sounds more like longing for the Progressive sense of subordination to central authority — marching orders and so forth.
Reagan was a populist candidate, so just who’s doing the rejecting?
The elites have made the money on the increased productivity of the past 50 years. The middle and working class have not. But it has been their increased productivity.
Those are facts.
You could also say that of the past 9,500 years, though as with so many other things, the pace has increased in the past 50.
Nah
You would have to show a graph of the last 9500 years to show that the period prior to 50 years ago was not just an aberration in the general trend.
Yes, I have. I live in suburban New Jersey. I know Montgomery County PA, Montgomery County Maryland and Montgomery County Texas. Lived in all three along with other places not named Montgomery.
You use the term “we”, so do you need a certain Republican message (does it matter if you can believe it will be implemented?) to vote GOP? I’m not sure if your friends are the same.
Certainly the lower middle class suburbanites are stressed, as you say. They are also less likely to hear political messaging because they are busy. These are closer to working class. Everyone deserves a better economy.
The upper class suburbanites constitute the kind of voters Hirsyiany wants to court. They have not been stressed much and are pretty solid default Democrats.
I know people who should be ‘conservative’ who voted for Biden over Trump because Trump is ‘rude’ or something. They are unaffected by any of this and would probably vote for the next Democrat using another excuse. I’ve been to their houses. they have NBC news breaks piping in propaganda during breaks in golf tournaments. They believe it all. Covid, masks, Zelinsky is a hero, borders aren’t a problem, because the Mexicans they know who work for them are nice people and Republicans are just racist.
Chasing down these fools votes is a bad use of resources.
I like Harsanyi, but he has a thing against “populism” in that he hates movements that tap into the popular will as opposed to being based on ideological support. At least that is how he seems to define it. So, for the sake of argument, let’s address his concerns.
If the GOP were to simply do what is “popular” based totally on what the mob calls for that could very well be an issue. He asserts that focusing on the “working class” is promoting liberal economic ideas. He didn’t lay those out, but raising tariffs is one popular canard that is usually pointed to. Immigration control is another issue where the traditional GOP and the libertarian GOP are at odds with working people. After that, I suspect he also has issues with policies that try to encourage manufacturing to stay in the US. I make these assumptions based on my reading and listening to him but he may have a different issue set.
Mr Harsanyi is a pundit…part of his job is to shape the opinion of those who read him. If he is unable to persuade his readers of his policies then that is on him because that is his job…to make those ideological policies popular so that they can be enacted. The politicians (especially the Banana Republicans) are terrible at this. I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of them do not believe in the policies that they claim to support, they just mouth the words so that they can win elections and keep their sinecures. Keeping those privileges is much more important to them than actually enacting any policies that they ran on. As with any group, there are some exceptions, but they are more ones that prove the rule that the politicians on the right are the real grifters.
So, Mr. Harsanyi wants to counter “populism” with rational ideology…he needs to make the case and convince a majority of people that he is right. The pundits on the right have been terrible at this for a while now, and the politicians even worse. That the Banana Republicans don’t even know how to talk about abortion is a prime example. Ironically, this is where Mr. Harsanyi actually has a great suggestion. We need to talk about limits on abortion, not bans. People understand limits (like speed limits, and age limits on driving, drinking, etc.) and we can use that language to good effect to point out how extreme the left and the Democrats are on the issue. Of course, I think that the Banana Republicans really preferred it when Roe and Casey were the law because they could promise the base anything and get their votes and never deliver or have to vote on anything real. Now they have that chance to enact laws around abortion and they have no idea what to do.
Yes! Progressive politics and morality is just another “luxury” which they can afford (for a while anyway). Why do they want it though? Because it’s the social zeitgeist through which they receive social credit and avoid social disapprobation, and they’re unaffected by the actual consequences in any direct way – until it’s gone. By then, though, they don’t remember what was lost, assuming they ever experienced the better times in the first place.
This is picayune nit-picking, and at any rate, irrelevant. The graph BGS produced shows enough context to understand a marked shift in recent times. If you want to argue medieval peasant wages, go for it, but that’s utterly irrelevant. You’re so far off-topic that you’re not even wrong. “Wrong” would imply some sort of basis to judge.
9,500 years? Get real.
that is not true – on issues like Abortion, he is quite strong, esp. for someone who is not religious.
There are some real word-salad problems with that piece, not the least of which is this:
Who talks about a state being “redistricted” in regards to governors? When was the last time we redrew state boundaries in some wild gerrymandering scheme? Beyond the creation of West Virginia? Never.
It’s the same thing that has been happening ever since humans started living in cities and specializing. If you don’t understand that part of it, you don’t understand the problem and your efforts to roll it back to a better time will be futile.
Apparently not chief of his concerns.
I am trying to figure out what bread-and-butter issues are at odds with the Trump base? My impression is that the Trump base is all about bread-and-butter issues, but maybe I have a different definition of what those are. Also, working class IMO is middle class if their household income falls within a certain range. Maybe there is a “blue collar” “white collar” distinction. And certainly middle income business owners have some different concerns than their employees, either white or blue collar, due to ownership risk/rewards. But those seem at the margin compared to Wall Street, multinational executives, politicians, etc. So I am unclear on how Harsanyi is positioning populism.
If the policies are only appealing to a minority of the electorate then, by definition, those policies aren’t populist.
I’ve heard (but not confirmed) that Republicans won in every Virginia district where Biden was +9 or less; in this context (and if this is true), then ‘Youngkin’, or rather his administration overseeing a state legislative election, did do well operating within the parameters of a Democrat gerrymander in what is still a blue state (and will be for the foreseeable future, those NoVa suburbanites are overwhelmingly not ‘dispositional conservatives’).
Including Brian Kemp, who is so bad that the leftist AJC was praising him for governing as a moderate after running as a conservative before 2020, with those other two (one who is a genuine conservative, the other probably the best conservatives can get in a blue state) is another matter entirely.
How about if they appeal to a majority of the electorate who was not already going to vote Democrat over anyone remotely conservative? That’s where the ‘right-wing populism’ and ‘left-wing populism’ qualifiers come into play.