6:48 ص
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WASHINGTON — By riding his appeal among working-class whites to the top of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump
has emboldened conservative thinkers to press their party of business
and the privileged to reshape its economic canon to more directly
benefit poorer workers it has often taken for granted.
The policy prescriptions of these so-called reform conservatives, or “reformocons,”
would not only break with some longtime Republican orthodoxy —
disavowing tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich, for
example — they would also counter more recent stances by Mr. Trump on
trade and immigration.
And
because of a lack of policy specifics in Mr. Trump’s
personality-centered campaign, reform conservatives see an opening
through which to push their prescriptions.
“What it means to be a conservative is up for grabs,” said Reihan Salam, the executive editor of the conservative National Review.
Whether
Mr. Trump prevails or the party is left to rebuild from defeat, these
conservatives in think tanks, advocacy groups and the news media — and a
few in political office — will be pressing for a new agenda: to update
the Reagan-era playbook with an eye to working-class voters without a
college education who form the Republican base. Ronald Reagan’s notions
that policies that benefit the rich and big business lift all incomes
now appear outmoded in an era of rising wealth inequality and stagnant
wages.
The
challenge to the party could be every bit as contentious as Mr. Trump’s
ascent has been. Beyond conservative think tanks and activist circles,
the new breed of conservatives has not made significant inroads among
House Republicans, for instance. And even these Republicans do not agree
on everything.
But some common ideas suggest their proposed road map for the party:
•
Reject additional tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year,
but expand breaks for low- and middle-income workers through tax credits
for children, the earned-income tax credit or a new wage subsidy using
tax dollars to bring low wages toward the local median level.
WASHINGTON — By riding his appeal among working-class whites to the top of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump
has emboldened conservative thinkers to press their party of business
and the privileged to reshape its economic canon to more directly
benefit poorer workers it has often taken for granted.
The policy prescriptions of these so-called reform conservatives, or “reformocons,”
would not only break with some longtime Republican orthodoxy —
disavowing tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich, for
example — they would also counter more recent stances by Mr. Trump on
trade and immigration.
And
because of a lack of policy specifics in Mr. Trump’s
personality-centered campaign, reform conservatives see an opening
through which to push their prescriptions.
“What it means to be a conservative is up for grabs,” said Reihan Salam, the executive editor of the conservative National Review.
Whether
Mr. Trump prevails or the party is left to rebuild from defeat, these
conservatives in think tanks, advocacy groups and the news media — and a
few in political office — will be pressing for a new agenda: to update
the Reagan-era playbook with an eye to working-class voters without a
college education who form the Republican base. Ronald Reagan’s notions
that policies that benefit the rich and big business lift all incomes
now appear outmoded in an era of rising wealth inequality and stagnant
wages.
The
challenge to the party could be every bit as contentious as Mr. Trump’s
ascent has been. Beyond conservative think tanks and activist circles,
the new breed of conservatives has not made significant inroads among
House Republicans, for instance. And even these Republicans do not agree
on everything.
But some common ideas suggest their proposed road map for the party:
•
Reject additional tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year,
but expand breaks for low- and middle-income workers through tax credits
for children, the earned-income tax credit or a new wage subsidy using
tax dollars to bring low wages toward the local median level.
• Promote the benefits of global trade agreements, but help displaced workers.
• Rule out fully privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and reassure workers they will be exempt from cost-cutting.
• Acknowledge that universal health care is here to stay, but push for market-oriented changes.
•
Disavow mass deportations and promote the economic benefits of
legalizing longtime workers who are in the country illegally, but reduce
the legal entry of less-skilled immigrants.
“What
we have going on right now, and Trump’s position in the Republican
Party, makes this recalibration that much more important, that much more
urgent,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah.
“Some
within the party,” he added, “have been all too willing to wear the
label of the Republican Party as being the party of Wall Street, or the
party of the top 1 percent.”
Although
most of them oppose Mr. Trump’s candidacy — Mr. Salam called him “an
overwhelmingly noxious and negative force” — these conservatives do
credit him with engaging working-class voters and dealing them into the
economic conversation.
“The biggest thing that Trump offers these voters is finally somebody paying attention,” said Henry Olsen, a scholar at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center.
“Imagine
that they’re the wallflowers at the high school dance and they’re
sitting off, ignored by everybody. Suddenly, the football hero comes up
and says, ‘Come dance with me.’ That’s intoxicating.”
Led
by younger conservatives, the push for new approaches began in the past
decade, as big spending and military interventions by the Bush
administration and a Republican-controlled Congress vexed many in the
party. Capturing the ferment was a 2008 book, “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream,” by Mr. Salam and Ross Douthat, who is now a columnist for The New York Times.
“The
Trump phenomenon has really opened things up — people are more inclined
to listen, elites within the party are more inclined to listen,” said
Mr. Salam, who, with Mr. Douthat, recently updated their book’s theme in an opinion article in The Times.
The authors wrote in their Op-Ed that Mr. Trump’s white working-class supporters were “clearly voting against
a party leadership that pays them lip service while ignoring their
concerns” — a revulsion that will not disappear even if Mr. Trump does.
Proponents
of a new conservative agenda have critics in both parties. Democrats
dismiss their ideas as repackaging a familiar right-wing agenda. Some
Republicans and conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh condemn
their cause as a return of moderate Republicanism or a capitulation to
liberalism.
Michael
A. Needham, the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, the
political arm of the Heritage Foundation, said reform conservatives and Tea Party-oriented organizations like his are allies in their desire to rewrite a “stale” economic agenda
tilted to Republican donors. But he acknowledged differences in tactics
and substance. His group and its allies favor conflict, like government
shutdowns, for instance. And they still want to repeal the Affordable
Care Act and cut taxes for everyone.
Yet
conservative agitators were mostly talking among themselves until Mr.
Trump toppled the party establishment, along the way flouting
longstanding party dogma on taxes, trade and immigration.
Democrats have long charged
that lower-income white Americans who vote heavily Republican do so
against their economic interests. A new poll for The Wall Street Journal
and NBC News had Hillary Clinton ahead over all but trailing Mr. Trump
by 13 percentage points among whites without a college education and by
21 points among men in that group. Past polls had her even further
behind with those working-class voters, however.
Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning
Joe” last week that the Democratic Party bore some responsibility. While
its policies may be geared toward workers, he said, “The Democratic
Party over all hasn’t spoken enough to those voters” — the “ordinary
people busting their necks.”
It was an echo of the Republican self-criticism now playing out.
For
all of Mr. Trump’s outreach to working-class whites, Robert VerBruggen,
the managing editor of The American Conservative, said the party
platform that emerged from the Republican convention was further
evidence of the gap between the party’s support from white blue-collar
workers and its agenda that all but ignores them.
“The breakdown of the working class was neglected,” he wrote in his magazine.
“There seems to have been little discussion of the economic anxieties
of working families, the safety net or the drug epidemic sweeping rural
America.”
“Instead,”
Mr. VerBruggen wrote, “their focus on the bottom half of the economic
spectrum seems to have been limited to a debate about the purchase of
unhealthy snacks with food stamps.”
Oren Cass,
a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the former domestic
policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, even suggested that
Republicans look for ways to harness labor unions for constructive
worker-management relationships. He also predicted more openness among
conservatives to raising taxes when justified.
“It’s
hard to imagine the Grover Norquist tax pledge having the salience it
once did,” Mr. Cass said, referring to the longstanding anti-tax vow
that most Republican candidates take. “That model of ‘no tax increases,
ever, under any circumstances’ I think is probably on its way out or
gone.”
Mr.
Norquist scoffed at the suggestion. “The pledge came out in ’86,” he
said. “Every six months from then somebody has said, ‘Oh, the pledge
won’t hold.’ ” It is, he added, “nonnegotiable.”