Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has laudably stressed that, in struggles between working Americans and companies that wage war on the working class, conservatives should unequivocally stand with workers. “Adversarial relations between labor and management are wrong,” he recently wrote. “They are wrong for both workers and our nation’s economic competitiveness. But the days of conservatives being taken for granted by the business community are over.”
Due to the incredible influence of the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate outfits, the Republican Party has for decades dogmatically demonized unions. This opposition must end. The core values of the American working class are—and for a long time have been—the same ones cherished by most who self-identify as conservative: honor, discipline, self-reliance, industriousness and patriotism.
Given that similarity, it’s unsurprising that 40 percent of union households voted for President Trump in 2020. Rather than an isolated case, this represents a trend. As the GOP presidential candidate in 2012, Mitt Romney captured 30 percent of union members, while Trump won 38 percent in 2016.
There is an ideological chasm between Main Street union members and union leadership. In just one typical example, the D.C.-based American Federation of Government Employees—the country’s largest federal employee union—gave 96 percent of its 2020 political donations to Democrats.
This is a political landscape primed for cultivation. If the GOP wants to make an audacious play at further expanding its base, it could back a conservative candidate for president of AFL-CIO in the union’s next election.
Alexei Woltornist is Co-Founder of ATHOS, a strategic-messaging firm and literary agency. He was formerly lead spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigations of Big Tech.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
