But they might mean it going forward. The parties realign - rarely, but not never. And there are a whole lot of voters who have been abandoned by the Democratic Party moving away from what it has been. It would not be impossible for the Republican Party to move into that territory.

Of course, it is more likely for the Republican Party to talk like it's moving into that territory, but not actually do anything. But, for example, Trump's emphasis on "America over trade" is something that could actually help workers.

Exactly, and I think Ahmari's article was sort of laying down a challenge for his fellow Republicans: "are we going to talk about helping the working class, or are we going to do it?"

Conservatives don't generally project their worldview through the lens of large social groups pitted against each other, so it's kind of meaningless to argue about whether conservatives are pro- or anti- working class. They aren't generally pro- or anti- any "class" from their own perspective, because they don't think dividing society up like that is a legitimate thing to do to begin with.

A typical conservative would say something like: what do you call the boss of a small window cleaning firm? Is he a capitalist or a member of the working class? The left generally ignore questions like this because they can't answer them. But they do spend lots of time trying to tell everyone that society is simple and "conservatives" are one big blob that all hate "workers".

Generally conservatives are anti-union, because historically unions have been very tied up with communism, very aggressive/violent and very anti-competitive, all of which are antithetical to what libertarian conservatives believe yield the most socially beneficial outcomes. That is, they're anti union because they think unions are in fact worse for the "working classes" - to the extent such a concept makes sense at all - than not having them.

“ But they don't really mean it and have never meant it.” Ah reading millions of minds I see.

I think there's a difference here, one that I didn't see immediately either.

No one in this subthread is talking about the millions of Republican voters out there. The people being talked about is the much smaller group of people who set Republican policy. And we don't need to read their minds; we can look at their policy platform and directly witness what they support.

I don't care about what you believe, I care about what policy you enact, and Republican policy has been objectively anti-worker for my lifetime. So if you vote for Republicans, you are anti-worker.