Plutocrats with Pitchforks

• In Event: Inequality and America's Fragile Democracy

Abstract

Unique among right-wing populists in rich democracies, President Trump has combined populist appeals with plutocratic priorities. His rhetoric focuses on stoking racial, cultural, and anti-immigration backlash. His policies have largely focused on securing economic rewards for narrow corporate interests and the superrich. We argue that Trumpism, for all its important peculiarities, is less a departure from than an intensification of the contemporary GOP’s long-term strategy. Over the past few decades, the GOP has faced an increasingly challenging dilemma of a sort that has often confronted (typically conservative) parties that have strong ties with economic elites in settings of very high inequality. Republican elites have gravitated toward an anti-system stance that combines policy efforts favorable to economic interests with electoral appeals that stoke racialized anti-government backlash. Skyrocketing inequality has made it harder and harder for the GOP to sell its traditional pro-business orientation to its newly downscale voting base. Faced with a choice between moderating on economic issues or radicalizing on cultural ones, Republicans chose the latter. In doing so, they nurtured forces that they no longer fully control.

Authors

• Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University

• Paul Pierson, University of California, Berkeley