Jeff Sessions supports the view that the Reps must separate themselves from the corporate elites and identify with the American worker.
Becoming the Party of Work--How the GOP can help struggling Americans, and itself. By Senator Jeff Sessions An excerpt:
When Americans went to the polls in 2012, the following was true: Work-force participation had sunk to its lowest level in 35 years, wages had fallen below 1999 levels, and 47 million Americans were on food stamps. Yet Mitt Romney, the challenger to the incumbent president, lost lower- and middle-income voters by an astonishing margin. Among voters earning $30,000 to $50,000, he trailed by 15 points, and among voters earning under $30,000 he trailed by 28 points.
And what did the GOP’s brilliant consultant class conclude from this resounding defeat? They declared that the GOP must embrace amnesty. The Republican National Committee dutifully issued a report calling for a “comprehensive immigration reform” that would inevitably increase the flow of low-skilled immigration, reducing the wages and living standards of the very voters whose trust the GOP had lost.
Over the past four decades, as factories were shuttered and blue-collar jobs were outsourced or automated, net immigration quadrupled. Yet the corporate-consultant class has pronounced that an insufficient level of immigration is the problem. A more colossal misreading of the political moment has rarely occurred.
Perhaps the most important political development now unfolding in the U.S. is the public’s growing loss of faith in our political and financial elites of both parties. To open the ears of disaffected voters, the GOP must break publicly from the elite immigration consensus of Wall Street and Davos. Republicans have a clear path to building a conservative majority if they free themselves from the corporate consultants and demonstrate to the American public that the GOP is the only party aligned with the core interests, concerns, and beliefs of everyday hardworking citizens.
Thanks for the citation to the article by Senator Jeff Sessions which I have carefully read. He obviously gets it.
It is clear that the Chamber of Commerce/Washington elitist position on immigration is hostile to the interests of Reagan Democrats and, certainly, Republican small-business entrepreneurs. He also draws out the facts concerning our smothering Washington behemoth that is the driving business abroad to find cheaper wages, less restrictive regulations, and sounder tax policies.
I am not sure that Reagan Democrats get the connection between the smothering federal government and their kitchen table predicaments that propel businesses offshore but the connection is surely there even as it is unrecognized.
There is a mountain of bad federal policies upon which to mount presidential campaigns and campaigns for lesser federal offices of which the Republican establishment certainly cannot be ignorant but they have consciously chosen another path.
Can Ted Cruz be the next Ronald Reagan delivering the same message to a new generation in a slightly different context?
