Kristoffer Smemo teaches Labor Studies and is on staff at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor & Employment. He is the author of Making Republicans Liberal: Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise.
The “pro-worker” conservatism of figures like Oren Cass and his American Compass think tank offers narrowly targeted measures to select workers while terrorizing immigrants and maintaining management’s control over the workplace and politics.
Liberal Republicanism’s collapse didn’t spring from some loss of decency in an age of polarization, but from the transformation of class struggle in America.