Something for everyone: If you had told me back in 2016 that the GOP of the future would, just eight years from now, feature the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and a celebrity-stripper with a face tattoo, in quick succession and to great fanfare, I would have thought you were yanking my chain.
But here we are. Sean O'Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, got up on stage last night at the Republican National Convention and rebuked big business while calling for labor law reform. With a massive amount of speaking time and no endorsement for former President Donald Trump, O'Brien was an odd choice. (Though he at one point praised Trump, saying "no other [Republican] nominee in the race would have invited the teamsters into this arena," which is probably true.) But inviting O'Brien also supports the thesis that the populist realignment has already happened, that Trump has remade the party in his own image, and that the party of free markets is no longer.
