The working class Republican conundrum
by digby
Ronald Brownstein takes a look at the blue collar GOP voter phenomenon and what it means for the party:
Across the key issues related to both legal and undocumented immigration, significantly more Republicans without a college degree expressed conservative views than Republicans who have completed at least four years of higher education, according to detailed results provided to Next America from a Pew Research Center national survey. Likewise, older Republicans embraced conservative views more often than the party’s younger members, the survey found.
These consistent contrasts may help explain why several of the likely 2016 GOP candidates jostling for blue-collar support have camped out positions not only opposing any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but also urging reductions in the level of legal immigration—a view rarely heard in recent presidential elections. That list includes Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and in a more limited way, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Santorum has called for reducing legal immigration by 25 percent, while Walker has spoken more generally of reducing legal immigration levels to protect American workers, especially during slow economic times. Huckabee has sharply criticized the H1-B visa program favored by technology companies to bring in high-skilled immigrants. Among the other candidates, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has most forcefully rejected the calls for reducing legal immigration levels.
The challenge for the GOP field is that the immigration positions preferred by their growing blue-collar faction generally land well to the right of the country overall, including independents. If one of the candidates holding these hardline positions wins the nomination—or succeeds in substantially pulling the eventual nominee toward their views—that could leave the party crosswise with majority opinion in next year’s general election.
And even a majority of their college educated and younger voters believe that immigrants are more of a burden than a strength which is just dumb.
If you listen to Trump’s ramblings in Las Vegas a bit ago you’ll also see how he ties all this xenophobia together with a larger worldview: foreigners, here and abroad, are threatening America. That’s hit the economic fears of these blue collar workers right where it intersects with their “patriotic” pro-military, authoritarian instinct. Perot did that too — and he didn’t have ISIS.
This is a recipe for far right populism. Sometimes known as fascism.
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