Culture-war red meat is all the GOP serves the working class

What most struck me, though, was the dramatic contrast between the “party of the working class” rhetoric and the policy substance of the platform. In Cruz’s speech at CPAC, he listed off some of the groups he insisted were being represented by the GOP. “[T]he Republican Party is the party of steel workers and construction workers and pipeline workers and taxicab drivers and cops and firefighters and waiters and waitresses.”

I’ll give him “cops.” And presumably “pipeline workers” are going to be given jobs through the approval of pipeline projects against any environmental objections—though I certainly wouldn’t expect the Texas GOP to side with any pipeline workers who go on strike over wages and working conditions.

But what does Cruz’s state party want to do for the rest of those groups?

The platform explicitly calls for the repeal of both local and federal minimum wage laws. It calls for the repeal of municipal ordinances mandating “sick/family leave” for employers with city contracts. It opposes “card check,” a process which would make it easier for all those construction workers, waitresses, cab drivers and so on to form labor unions by letting the decision of a majority of employees in some workplaces to sign union cards suffice—without the need for a drawn-out unionization process. Oh, and it includes this crisp unambiguous statement: “We support privatization of the Social Security system.”