Pushing Idea of GOP as Party of ‘Working Class,’ House Panel To Convene in an Oklahoma Barn

A top House committee will hold a hearing in an Oklahoma barn next week in an effort to push the GOP as the party of “working-class Americans.”According to its chairman, Representative Jason Smith, the House Ways and Means Committee is going to “hear from farmers, small-business owners, workers, and those in the U.S. energy sector about the challenges facing working-class Americans and how they think Congress can help.”The panel will convene on March 7 at Express Clydesdales, a Yukon, Oklahoma, event venue and marketing firm associated with Express brands and Express Ranches, a cattle ranching firm.According to Mr. Smith, the hearing will help highlight “the divide between the rosy picture the White House paints and the grim reality on the ground for millions of working Americans and families who are struggling to make ends meet and provide for their loved ones.”The barn hearing is only the latest in a series of field hearings and outings by the new Congress, which the White House has criticized as a “publicity stunt.” The most prominent of these was Speaker McCarthy’s visit to the Arizona border, which was followed by a House Judiciary Committee field hearing at Yuma, Arizona, led by Representative Jim Jordan.The coming hearing in Oklahoma will be the latest effort by Republicans in their quest to claim the mantle as a “working class” political party, as Mr. Smith puts it.“My fellow GOP members on the Ways and Means Committee stand with me in that the Republican Party is the party of the working class,” Mr. Smith told Fox News.As part of this mission, Mr. Smith, a representative of Missouri, has become a vocal advocate for protectionist trade policy, advocating that “we bring back our strategic supply … to the United States.”The most prominent champion in Congress of the Republican Party’s push toward populism is another representative of the Show Me State, Senator Hawley.Most recently, Mr. Hawley broke with his party to vote against imposing a contract on American rail unions, claiming that it was an opportunity to position the party as union-aligned, a position traditionally held by Democrats.“GOP wants to be a working class party, or should want to,” Mr. Hawley tweeted ahead of the vote. “We’re about to have our first test vote — with the workers or with Biden.”Senators Rubio and Cruz also joined with Mr. Hawley in breaking from the Republican line on the vote, with all three joining Senator Sanders in voting in support of giving the rail employees seven days of sick leave.“I think one of the most consequential political shifts of the last decade is that Republicans have become a blue collar party,” Mr. Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict.” “We are the party of working men and women.”Conservative pundits like Josh Hammer hail the GOP’s “transformation from the Bordeaux-sipping party of Acela Corridor suburbanites into the beer-drinking party of working-class Rust Belt-ers and Sun Belt-ers.”A recent Jacobin magazine report observed that Republicans have “a slight edge (49 to 48 percent) over the Democrats among voters with household incomes below $50,000 nationally,” calling it “cause for concern.”Representative Debbie Dingell is among the Democrats urging the party to “reconnect with working-class voters,” arguing, “We have not lost them, but we have to remind them that we’re fighting for them,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “We need to be in those union halls, we need to be on those family farms, we need to be in those veterans’ centers.”

Pushing Idea of GOP as Party of ‘Working Class,’ House Panel To Convene in an Oklahoma Barn

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