Despite the blue-collar affectations of some of its most visible leaders or the populist rhetoric of its most vocal cheerleaders, it has never been more obvious that the Republican Party is the party of the boss, and in particular the party of the small-business tyrant. Who or what is the small business tyrant? It’s the business owner whose livelihood rests on a steady supply of low-wage labor; who opposes unions, resents even the most cursory worker protections and employee safety regulations, and who views those workers as little more than extensions of himself, to use as he sees fit. The small-business tyrant is, to borrow an argument from the writer and podcaster Patrick Wyman, an especially reactionary member of America’s landowning gentry: local economic elites whose wealth comes primarily from their ownership of physical assets. Those assets, Wyman explains, “vary depending on where in the country we’re talking about; they could be a bunch of McDonald’s franchises in Jackson, Mississippi, a beef-processing plant in Lubbock, Texas, a construction company in Billings, Montana, commercial properties in Portland, Maine, or a car dealership in western North Carolina.”To look at Republican politics at the state level is to see an economic agenda dominated by the worst of this particular class.

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Persons: podcaster Patrick Wyman, Wyman Organizations: Republican Party, Republican Locations: Jackson , Mississippi, Lubbock , Texas, Billings , Montana, Portland , Maine, North Carolina