REPUBLICANS REGULARLY DENOUNCE "ELITES" BUT DON'T LIKE BLAMING THEM FOR WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO

The mainstream media regularly tells us that the Democratic Party is now the party of upscale voters, while the GOP is the party of the working class. Is this true? Exit polling in 2020 found that Joe Biden won voters with incomes under $100,000 a year by double digits, while Donald Trump won $100,000-plus voters by double digits. On the other hand, Biden won among voters with college degrees, while Trump won among voters without them.

Whatever the numbers show, Republicans certainly complain about "elites" quite a bit. Look at Marjorie Taylor Greene's Twitter accounts, for instance, and you'll see her making pronouncements like this:

We are on a sinking ship and the elites are drinking and eating and dancing to the music on the top deck refusing to acknowledge that we are on the verge of sinking to the abyss.

Elsewhere, she complains that Congress is "putting globalist elites first and hard working tax paying Americans last."

Even Republicans who are the "elites" denounce the "elites." Elon Musk, on Twitter, argues that there is an "immense ideological gap between the effete elite and the people" and that "indoctrination" takes place in "elite high schools & colleges." Donald Trump Jr. proclaimed that his father won the 2016 election because he "did not spend time raising $ from the billionaire elite. Instead he spent time talking to the American people!" More recently, he tweeted, "There is no level of depravity the elites will not go to to force their agenda upon you."

But somehow, when the elites actually kill people, these great haters of elitism work tirelessly to shift the blame elsewhere.

Why has Boeing has a terrible safety record recently? It seems clear that elitist bosses at Boeing have pressured the workforce to cut corners on safety. That's what we're learning from a very good story by Maureen Tkacik at The American Prospect:

CEO Jim McNerney ... repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” book he co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. He initially refused to let nearly any of these talented assholes work on the 787 Dreamliner, instead outsourcing the vast majority of the development and engineering design of the brand-new, revolutionary wide-body jet to suppliers, many of which lacked engineering departments. The plan would save money while busting unions, a win-win, he promised investors. Instead, McNerney’s plan burned some $50 billion in excess of its budget and went three and a half years behind schedule.

Conscientious employees were driven out of the company, and it was only a matter of time before two Boeing 737 Max 8 planes suffered fatal crashes and a panel was torn off a Max 9 plane flown by Alaska Airlines during a flight.

After that Alaska Airlines incident, did members of the self-styled anti-elitist party blame the elite management of Boeing? Of course not:

... Elon Musk ... took to his platform X after the Alaska Airlines incident to ask, “Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening.”

He added, “People will die due to DEI.”

... Donald Trump Jr. posted, “I’m sure this has nothing to do with mandated Diversity Equity and Inclusion practices in the airline industry!!!” Other users questioned whether Delta has “DEI quotas for their mechanics” and stated that “DEI practices are going to cause disasters” and that “DEI actually means DIE.”

A Republican congressman, state legislator, Phil Lyman of Utah, posted "DEI = DIE" this week after a cargo ship collided with and destroyed Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge. He didn't blame "elites," even though he's campaigning for governor and his messaging includes anti-"elite" rhetoric.

What exactly does “Utah’s elite economy” mean?
It means there is a small group doing exceptionally well, while the rest of us are just trying to survive the overbearing taxes, housing rates, and taxes. #Lymanforgovernor#UtahsEliteEconomy#utpol #utgov#UtahIsOverTaxed pic.twitter.com/eKhP7EXiwY

— Phil Lyman for Governor (@phil_lyman) January 14, 2024

And gosh, what do you know -- the "elites" involved in this disaster appear to be corner-cutters on safety, too:

The company that chartered the cargo ship that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was recently sanctioned by regulators for blocking its employees from directly reporting safety concerns to the US Coast Guard — in violation of a seaman whistleblower protection law, according to regulatory filings....

Eight months before a Maersk Line Limited–chartered cargo ship crashed into the Baltimore bridge, likely killing six people and injuring others, the Labor Department sanctioned the shipping conglomerate for retaliating against an employee who reported unsafe working conditions aboard a Maersk-operated boat. In its order, the department found that Maersk had “a policy that requires employees to first report their concerns to [Maersk] ... prior to reporting it to the [Coast Guard] or other authorities.”

Federal regulators at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which operates under the Labor Department, called the policy “repugnant” and a “reprehensible and an egregious violation of the rights of employees,” which “chills them from contacting the [Coast Guard] or other authorities without contacting the company first.”

But our "anti-elite" Republican Party always circles the wagons around elites when there are more satisfying scapegoats, especially if they have darker skin. The GOP's anti-elite posture is an out-and-out fraud.