HOUSE REPUBLICANS DISCOVER "CLASS WARFARE"

This is a bit of a surprise (or maybe it isn't):

In an attempt to revoke billions of dollars worth of government incentives to oil and gas producers, the House on Thursday approved a measure that ... is intended to prevent companies from avoiding at least $7 billion in payments to the government over the next five years for oil and gas they produce in publicly owned waters.

Scores of Republicans, already under fire from voters about gasoline prices, sided with Democrats on the issue. Eighty-five Republicans voted to attach the provision to the Interior Department's annual spending bill....

Attacking big business used to be "class warfare," and limited to Democrats and other alleged haters of the American way of life, but all of a sudden it's OK, at least according to a third of the GOP House delegation.

These legislators seem to be figuring out that the Republican/conservative rank-and-file isn't nearly as pro-corporate as elected Republicans generally are. This is really becoming clear as the immigration debate heats up. The Bush administration may not like going after employers who hire illegal immigrants, but ordinary Joes love it -- go to the comments here and experience the glee at the jailing of two executives whose company hired illegals, and the wish for even more ("Increase the prison sentence 20 times. Increase the fines a thousand fold"). And note that one outgrowth of the anti-immigration movement is a collection of scruffy Web sites -- Operation Shame on You, We Hire Aliens, Workplace Watchdog, and (warning: audio) Save Our State -- targeting companies for boycotts.

There's more. Here's a talk radio guy with a manifesto that, in between denunciations of "gangbangers" and gay rights and "the Hollywood elite" and "politically correct powers that be," rails against outsourcing to sweatshops and the influence of Jack Abramoff. (CNN's Lou Dobbs, a longtime agitator on the subject of illegal immigration, also denounces outsourcing.)

And, of course, religious conservatives are always willing to attack a large corporation if it seems to endorse obscenity or homosexuality.

For better or worse, I think it's possible that someday soon there could be a noticeable populist movement in this country that's wary of big business but also anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-abortion, and generally anti-elite. Such a movement would certainly be in the American grain -- think of William Jennings Bryan, friend to debt-ridden farmers and denouncer of evolution and demon rum. It may not happen, but it wouldn't surprise me.