Back in March, Congressman Jim Banks wrote a memo to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy entitled “Cementing GOP as the Working-Class Party.” It has been derided by some, including embattled Republican Caucus Chair Liz Cheney, as “neo-Marxist.” So I decided to take a deeper dive into the document.
Please, read the whole thing for yourself.
Right off the bat, Banks said “President Trump gave the Republican Party a political gift: we are now the party supported by most working-class voters.” It immediately leads one to question Banks credibility when he calls this a gift. Working-class voters have long supported Republicans, particular on cultural, tax, and gun issues. The problem is that Trump, while solidifying the working class base, drove suburbanites out of the party in droves. Solidifying working class support is one thing, but Trump ripped the Republican coalition apart.
Banks continues by analyzing the percentage of certain populations that did or did not support Trump, and then got to the point where there was a reversal of Wall Street support of Republican candidates. He notes, correctly, that Trump caused a “paradigm reversal” and that both parties are “undergoing coalitional transformations”. He’s not wrong about that, and he’s right that Trump caused these shifts. The problem is this: Trump caused the Republican coalition to become smaller, the Democratic coalition to become a little bigger, and left a lot of actual conservatives like me virtually political nomads.
Then comes a serious “what the f***” statement from Banks:
There is an embittered and loud minority in the GOP that finds our new coalition distasteful, but President Trump’s gift didn’t come with a receipt. Members that want to swap out working-class voters because they resent President Trump’s impact on the GOP are wrong. In fact, they are intentionally sabotaging Republicans’ political future.
I cant’t tell if Banks is naïve, stupid, or just deceitful. What Trump did politically, costing Republicans Congress, losing the popular vote twice, inciting a coup d’etat, attacking the integrity of our elections and so forth, isn’t a gift. It’s an anchor around the neck of every Republican and every conservative around the country. That, more than anything else, is what anti-Trump Republicans want to do away with. Working class Republicans have always been an important and valuable part of the Republican coalition. Nobody wants to get rid of them. Banks knows this, but instead creates a “us-versus-them” narrative, an argument that only he is making. It’s a strawman.
Banks produces a list of action items that will allow the GOP to “enthusiastically rebranding and reorienting as the Party of the Working Class.” His plan actually doesn’t totally suck. The plan is:
Hug the agenda that differentiated President Trump in 2016 and supplement it with new, relevant ideas;
Highlight the cultural and economic elitism that animates the Democrat Party
GOP Members must bring this message home to their constituents through tangible action items.
So those last two points make a lot of sense and are good ideas. The problem is that first bullet. Don’t get me wrong, trying to highlight “new, relevant ideas” is the way forward for any party at any time The problem is the concept that Republicans should “Hug the agenda that differentiated President Trump”. That idea is a loser ideology. It’s a loser strategy. It helped to lose both chambers of Congress and the White House in 2020. There were no tangible action items coming out of the agenda. Hell, it’s hard to say that Trump had an agenda at all except he was for winning and against somebody else winning. Trump just hops and skips from point to point, never settling on a coherent message until he dreamed up the idea of a stolen election, which Republicans in the House have adopted in a nearly full-throated manner. It seems to be the only unifying principle in the House, which is why the House caucus wants to throw Liz Cheney overboard for liberal Elise Stefanik.
Banks policy proposals and analysis are as bad as his election analysis.
Banks tries to highlight how Republicans should support “pro-worker” trade policies and cites as his reasoning this:
From February 2020 to May 2020, the unemployment rate for high-wage workers rose by 3.6% while the unemployment rate for medium and low wage workers rose by 14.2% and 19.8%
Are you f***ing kidding me? Banks is trying to justify a reworking of U.S. trade policy to become even more pro-tariff thanks to increases in unemployment due to the pandemic? This isn’t exactly deep thinking here and Banks is hoping that his fellow Republicans are gullible enough to swallow this unflinchingly as a justification to implementation of “pro-worker” policies unrelated to the pandemic without getting into the weeds of what these “pro-worker” policies are.
During the Trump Administration, “pro-worker” seemed to be government handouts and big government spending programs. The Trump “pro-worker” agenda is virtually indistinguishable from Biden’s “pro-worker” agenda, differing only in the price tag. It sounds like is Banks saying that in order to defeat Democrats that Republicans need to out Democrat the Democrats.
Banks then highlights GOP support for free-market principles, but goes on to talk about how the GOP should take stronger stands against corporations, particularly big tech. This is an absurd level of cognitive dissonance. You can’t highlight support for free-market principles and then talk about the ways that free-market principles don’t apply to a huge sector of the economy.
Here are some of the other action items Banks highlights
Hold working class roundtables;
State clearly that “Our opposition to China is a corollary of our support for working Americans”
Anti-wokeness
Stronger immigration policies
Main Street vs Wall Street arguments
Create a Working Families Task Force
Focus on Individual and Digital Donations, eschewing corporate donations
Embrace a Made in America Agenda
So ultimately, the Banks memo is pro-tariff, anti-corporation, anti-elitist, pro-worker, anti-business . Is it “neo-Marxist” as Liz Cheney said it was? It’s hard to call it exactly neo-Marxist, but it is certainly no type of conservatism that I have ever seen.
Missing from Banks document include common sense policies like:
Tax cuts
Spending reductions
Reductions in red tape
Smaller government
A strong national defense
Also known as, the agenda that helped Republicans to win the Presidency five out of seven times from 1980-2004. Maybe Banks doesn’t recognize that since he wasn’t elected to Congress until the GOP had already sold it’s soul to Trump’s brand of leftism.
Whether or not the Banks Memo is neo-Marxist or not, it’s a terrible strategy, terrible public policy and an electoral loser. House Republicans need to return to the principles with a proven track record of success, both in politics and in policy, instead of doubling down on the failures of left-wing Trumpism. Banks wrote not a path for a winning future, but a roadmap to electoral oblivion.