The Republican Workers Party is a book by Frank Buckley, subtitled How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy and Why It Was Just What We Needed. Buckley discussed it on The Bob Zadek Show in a September 2018 episode framed as a guide to understanding American politics that year, and first announced it during a December 2017 appearance discussing his earlier book The Republic of Virtue [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]]. Bob Zadek introduced Buckley as a professor of law at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law, a former speechwriter for President Trump, and a participant in the Trump campaign and the transition The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018).
Origin and title
Buckley told Zadek the book was about the ideas behind Trump and was scheduled for release in October 2018, just before the congressional election; he said he was addressing why the old Republican Party died and why it deserved to die. He noted that he had worked on the Trump campaign and therefore had some insight into it [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]].
On the later episode, Buckley said the title was not his own invention: Trump himself had said the party would be a Republican Workers Party, and Buckley said he took the phrase from Trump. He also recalled Trump saying he would be the greatest jobs president America had ever seen, and said that so far Trump was fulfilling that promise The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018).
Jobs, work and the Constitution
Zadek opened one segment by observing that the word “jobs” appears nowhere in the Constitution, which he described as a political document rather than an economic one, and asked whether job creation is a byproduct of a benign government or a task of government. Buckley agreed there is nothing in the Constitution that says to produce jobs, and said the founders set up a constitution that would not dictate policy; on jobs, he said it was mostly a matter of government backing off rather than producing make-work. He invoked Milton Friedman’s negative income tax, describing the idea of bundling welfare into a single payment such as $60,000, and argued that the difference between earning that sum and receiving it as a gift is enormous in psychological terms, because jobs bring a sense of belonging, fraternity with fellow workers, contribution to the economy, and independence from government. He cited the proverb that a man swift in his labor shall stand before kings, meaning a job gives a person the independence to defy a king, which dependence on a handout does not The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018).
Zadek credited Trump with reducing the regulatory burden and rolling back the regulatory state, calling it a profound gift to the economy and important to job creation, and asked whether job creation belonged to a broader philosophical worldview or was simply a way to get elected. Buckley, in the same segment, tied work to marriage, houses, mortgages and family, and said the message about jobs was that government should create the economic conditions for people to have jobs, after which people take care of themselves. He contrasted this with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which he said took delight in taking jobs away from people, citing coal miners and a speech in Kentucky in which she said they would not have jobs but would be trained to work in Silicon Valley; he described that as an empty promise to a coal miner in Kentucky The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018).
Nationalism, authenticity and the campaign
Asked whether Trump ran pragmatically or on belief, Buckley answered both. He said what was basic to Trump was his nationalism, his love of America, and his sense that ordinary Americans were being screwed by trade deals and by a Democratic Party and a Republican Party that had given up on ordinary Americans; that core required no preparation, and Trump was completely authentic by comparison with what Buckley called the formaldehyde-frozen face of Hillary Clinton and all her advisors. Buckley also described campaign mechanics: the priority set by outreach staff was evangelicals, African Americans and Hispanics, and he said he asked whether they had forgotten the Catholic voter. He called the Catholic voter the big swing constituency in American politics, said Catholics had supported the winner in every election except 2000 since 1952, and said they went plus six for Trump and plus 23 for white Catholics in 2016. Reaching them required Trump to tweet about Mother Teresa, do telephone hookups with Catholic leaders, and appear on the Catholic television station EWTN; Buckley said the consequence was Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, and that was the election The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018).
Freedom, libertarianism and the future of the GOP
Zadek, describing himself as having a libertarian orientation, said he looks for where personal freedom fits into political discourse and that he did not see it in the election conversation; he said Trump had never spoken of personal freedom as an end in itself. Buckley replied that America has almost the world’s most generous welfare policy in per-capita spending, ranking around second or third, and that this is not going to change. He described the Trump campaign as a war on two fronts: against extreme anti-nationalists in the Democratic Party, the Hillary people, and against people like Ted Cruz on the right. He said the campaign was specifically not talking about freedom per se, though what it said mostly overlapped with a libertarian agenda: removing the burdens small business faced from the regulatory morass, opposing crony capitalism as represented by Hillary Clinton, and opposing campaign finance laws. Eighteen months on, he said, politics had gone crazy, there was no possibility of deal-making with the Democrats, and the right was a completely fractured party still in shock that had not figured out the Republican Workers Party The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018).
On immigration, Zadek asked whether Trump’s aims approximated the Canadian points system. Buckley said it was totally the Canadian system, that the people presenting it in Congress liaised daily with Canadians to fine-tune it, and that a system geared toward bringing in people who will help the citizens of the country allows a large intake, so it is about quality not quantity. He recommended watching YouTube for Justin Trudeau welcoming refugees to Canada in December 2015, calling it very moving and wishing the United States could do the same. Asked about the future philosophical approach of the Republican Party, Buckley said it was totally in shock and had not figured it out; he named Tom Cotton and Jim Jordan as people figuring it out, said most Republicans had not a clue what Republican presidential politics were like, and said that at the local level allegiance to the Trump campaign and presidency would be crucially important in getting people elected. He called it a Republican Party in transition. Zadek observed that the philosophy on the wane was libertarianism as a political philosophy; Buckley replied that philosophy is on the wane and pragmatism is back, and that the parallel for understanding Trump is not populism and not Milton Friedman but Benjamin Disraeli, who destroyed the old English Conservative Party in 1845 and created a new party — a man suspicious of free trade who wanted a national party reaching out to all parts of Britain The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018).
Across episodes
The topic appears in two episodes. In December 2017, Buckley announced the forthcoming book and its October 2018 publication date at the end of a discussion of The Republic of Virtue; in September 2018, he discussed the published book at length. The excerpts show no development of the argument between the two appearances beyond the shift from announcement to exposition.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the book’s publisher, its full argument beyond the themes Buckley discusses, or any reviews or sales figures. They do not give the outcome of the 2018 congressional election the book was timed to precede, nor any detail of the Canadian points system beyond Buckley’s characterization. Buckley’s earlier books are named only as prior appearances, and the excerpts do not describe their contents.