House Republicans are taking a page out of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign playbook and rebranding the GOP as the working man’s party.
On a range of issues from immigration to trade to mandates, Republicans say their party has become a refuge for blue-collar voters who are increasingly alienated by an elitist and authoritarian Democratic Party.
“The left, which now controls the Democrat Party, has made them the party of the super mega-wealthy who live on the coasts and people who don’t work. The Republican Party is everybody else,” Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, told The Washington Times.
Republican leadership is giving the party’s image a makeover from one of corporate corner offices and country clubs to one that’s more truck stops and construction sites — and one that’s increasingly diverse.
Over the last decade, Republicans made a 12% gain among blue-collar voters who now affiliate themselves with the party, according to a recent NBC News poll.
The same data showed Democrats had an 8% decrease in support from blue-collar workers.
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House Republicans plan to capitalize on these gains in November by drawing a stark contrast between their agenda and the big-government policies of President Biden and congressional Democrats that the GOP says hurt working-class Americans.
It’s the same message that fueled Mr. Trump’s win in 2016 when his charismatic call to action energized White working-class voters and drew many of them off the sidelines to become first-time voters. His message included getting tough with China on trade issues, bringing back jobs to the U.S., cracking down on illegal immigration and restoring a law-and-order agenda to reduce crime.
Six years later, those issues still resonate, said Rep. Jim Banks, Indiana Republican, an Indiana Republican who chairs the conservative Republican Study Committee.
He penned a memo last year to House GOP leadership that outlined a plan to cement the party’s connection to the working class. He said the strategy must be less about Mr. Trump and more about the “America First” policies the former president brought to the forefront.
In the memo, Mr. Banks encouraged House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to hold “working-class roundtables” with workers, create a task force to draft policies that would benefit working-class Americans and focus on small-dollar, individual donors over corporate donors.
“If we don’t focus on the Trump agenda when we get the majority back, we’ll lose these voters again,” Mr. Banks said in an interview. “But if we do, I think we can see these voters as part of our Republican coalition for a generation.”
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GOP strategist Brian Reisinger said the inroads Republicans have made with working-class voters is economical and cultural, crediting the leftward shift of the Democratic Party for GOP gains.
“People in small towns and people who are working class have begun to see the Democrats shift more and more toward the kinds of values and things being discussed on the East Coast,” Mr. Reisinger said. “Their issues seem pretty far away from peoples’ day-to-day lives.”
Democrats, meanwhile, disagree that Republicans have cultivated an edge in attracting voters who the left long considered a reliable blue bloc.
Rep. Danny Davis, Illinois Democrat, said his party’s support for unions and elevating incomes through proposals like raising the minimum wage should still be winners with blue-collar voters.
Mr. Davis criticized GOP efforts to rebrand itself, saying the party can’t be true to working-class voters if they don’t want to make the wealthy and corporations pay more taxes.
“It’s hard to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,” Mr. Davis said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Rep. Danny Davis.
• Mica Soellner can be reached at msoellner@washingtontimes.com.
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