You folks who think the GOP will abandon pro-business and free markets are insane.
This statement demonstrates much of the problem with the current Republican "establishment" view of things. Much of the reason why the GOP is flailing is because it has taken ideals like capitalism, business, free markets, etc. and placed those as the ultimate objectives of the economic portions of our system rather than viewing improving peoples' lives as the ultimate objective and using free-market capitalism to do it. Maybe 15% of America believes in capitalism as an ideological tenet, while probably 65% believe it is generally the best economic system to distribute resources but only as a means and not as an ends unto itself. The Republican Party must pitch the argument to voters that its economic policies will actually lead to growth that will help those voters rather than arguing "well, you believe in capitalism, don't you?". At the moment, there are a whole lot of people out there who don't want to end capitalism but simply want it to work for them rather than work to make the stock market go up. One could argue they benefit from the stock market going up, but I think many Americans, perhaps even most Americans, will find that a rather dubious assumption.
I fail to see how your valid criticism means a change in policy/philosophy is in order rather than a change in the style/articulation of the message. I don't buy into the parties switched fairy tale, and it's fairly obvious that the GOP has had some strain of pro-business ideal in its platform since the beginning, and they've had periods of unbelievable success. They need to better articulate (once again) that business is not this boogeyman responsible for everyone's problems as the Democrats often promote but rather the lifeblood of our economy, made up of ordinary Americans (and the fact that some of had "made it" and become rich should not be demonized). I'll agree that we're not articulating that well at all, but the line of thinking "tax those evil rich people, it's not fair they have that much!" needs to be thrown back where it belongs.
There a few important distinctions, some merely stylistic and some affecting policy. To start with the stylistic, I agree with you that business should not be a bogeyman, but "the lifeblood of our economy" and "responsible for everyone's problems" aren't mutually exclusive. Why should I be "pro-business" regardless of what party I belong to (the switching sides narrative is based on about the intellectual rigor of a political matrix score, so I'm going to ignore it altogether)? Why should I accept as a fundamental ideological tenet that what's good for business is truly
good overall? Obviously there are a lot of answers as to how business benefit society (providing jobs, the means to support a family, making stuff, etc.), but that is far short of supporting the extraordinarily high bar necessary to accept it as fundamentally as certain Republicans seem to think. No, we shouldn't demonize the rich, but that doesn't mean we should cater to their interests. I agree that "tax those evil rich people, it's not fair they have that much!" is a terrible statement because the left has an unreasonable obsession with "equality" (whatever that means). But that doesn't mean the top marginal income tax bracket needs to be lowered in perpetuity either as many Republicans seem to think.
Also, "pro-business" and "capitalism" aren't quite the same thing. The former is the government catering to the interests of a specific set of people under the pretense that everyone will benefit from economic growth. The latter is the government keeping their hands off of who wins or loses under the pretense that that approach will lead to economic growth (or, weirdly, some sort of belief that government action is immoral).
As for the policy components, it's a bit harder to figure out what the Republican position is on some of these things, one could certain argue whether lower minimum wages, opposition to unionization, mandatory pay for sick/maternity leave, overtime laws, welfare payments, capital gains taxes, property taxes, and support of sales taxes and corporate speech really are good for society overall. Now, depending on how you define these issues, I agree with the GOP on a lot of them. But I have a hard time seeing, for example, how increasing the sales tax, as Republicans have encouraged in many states, improves things for working class Americans. I once asked a very intelligent Republican friend why he supported our governor's plan to increase the sales tax and he responded with "we need to cut a xxx other taxes and the sales tax increase is to make the numbers work out". Indeed such statements, albeit not from a politician but still, demonstrate a piece of why something like Trump could exist.
