Tucker Carlson doesn’t often have Republican primary candidates on his top-rated television show. But he’s had two on this month, and he’s gushed about both.
“I probably shouldn’t say this; I’m really glad you’re doing it,” Carlson told Hillbilly Elegy author and Ohio resident J.D. Vance on his July 1 broadcast. “I admire you, and I wish you luck, very much. Thank you for doing this.”
Carlson had similar praise for Arizona venture capitalist Blake Masters, who appeared on Carlson’s July 12 show. “What a blessing it is to announce good news on television. There is so little of it,” Carlson began.
“The Republican Party is getting better, much better,” Carlson continued. “We know that because of two new Republican Senate candidates. The first is J.D. Vance in Ohio, and the second in the state of Arizona, Blake Masters is running. Every bit as impressive.”
It’s not hard to see why Carlson likes Vance and Masters. Both are running on populist, anti-elite messages that sound like something straight out of a Carlson monologue.
“If you think about the entire trajectory of American life over the last 30 or 40 years, you have elites in the ruling class that have plundered this country, that have made it harder for middle-class Americans to live a normal life,” Vance told Carlson on his July 1 show. “When those Americans dare to complain about the conditions of their own country … about the southern border or jobs being shipped overseas — they get called racists and called bigots, xenophobes, or idiots. They need somebody who’s willing to speak for them and willing to fight for them.”
Masters struck similar notes in his campaign video announcement. “Our leaders have shipped millions of jobs to China. And the internet, which was supposed to give us an awesome future, is instead being used to shut us up,” Masters’s voice-over intones. “It’s time to put this country first. We need to enforce the law. And we need to finish the wall. We have to build an economy where you can afford to raise a family on one single income. Instead of pretending that we can somehow fix foreign countries, we have to take care of each other.”
In addition to criticizing mass immigration and free trade, especially with China, both candidates seem willing to question previous Republican orthodoxies on issues such as taxes. Vance, in particular, has often mentioned he’d like to see corporations and wealthy investors, including his friend Peter Thiel, pay more in taxes.
Another young Republican who has received help from Thiel in the past, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has also been inventive on the populist front. This April, Hawley introduced legislation giving married families with children $12,000 a year, paid in monthly installments by the IRS. All a family would have to do to qualify is earn at least $7,540 in wages the previous year.
“Starting a family and raising children should not be a privilege only reserved for the wealthy,” Hawley said when introducing the legislation. ”Millions of working people want to start a family and would like to care for their children at home, but current policies do not respect these preferences. American families should be supported, no matter how they choose to care for their kids.”
An America-first Republican Party open to higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy to make it easier for working-class people to afford a family is not exactly a new idea.
Way back in 2005, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam looked at the changing demographics of the GOP and concluded:
Vance and Masters haven’t won anything yet. And their policy specifics for making it possible for workers to raise a family on one single income haven’t been fully fleshed out. But if they do win, it will be pretty clear which direction the party is going.
