This election cycle keeps getting weirder. Conservative elites—still grappling with the rise of Trump—are now pointing their fingers at white working-class voters and blaming them for the current state of affairs. They aren’t mincing words, either. Here’s Kevin Williamson in the National Review:
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog—you will come to an awful realization. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.
Now, most people won’t care about some diatribe in a conservative magazine. But a growing class rift could spell problems for the Republican Party. For decades, the GOP exploited the cultural and economic anxieties of “downscale” white voters in order to win elections. They promised that tax cuts and less government spending would create prosperity for all. They also promised to resurrect a traditional American culture that would keep women and assorted “others” marginalized.
Trump voters are no longer buying what the conservative establishment is trying to sell them, at least in terms of economics. And the demographics and culture of the nation continue to shift rapidly. If the establishment has alienated one of their core constituencies, does the GOP transform into a more overtly populist and nativist party? I’m not sure that’s a viable party for winning national elections. Or does it schism into a Trump party and a conservative party? If we see more attacks from conservative elites on working-class elites, a schism seems likely.
