Why The GOP Should Embrace The Bourgeois Class

For most of my thirty-seven years, Republicans have treated the American middle class like a social misfit in high school. They might wave and say hi now and then, but they don’t want to be seen sitting with them at lunch. When Trump came onto the scene with a bulldozer and a blowtorch, the Right started calling itself the party of the "forgotten man." That was a big part of Trump’s appeal. Remember what he told black Americans in 2016? “What do you have to lose?” But if the GOP wants to stay effective after Trump, it needs to remember the truth about revolutions, reforms, and lasting political coalitions. These movements are rarely led by the poorest. They are led by the bourgeois.

Fortune magazine published an article highlighting a recent trend of professionals in their 40s returning to school because the job market has collapsed beneath them. “We absolutely see this trend accelerating,” says Lacey Kaelani, CEO of job-search engine Metaintro. “In combination with layoffs over the recent years plus the rise of required AI skills, experience is no longer enough.” These are not college dropouts or weed-smoking degenerates. They did everything the system told them to—go to school, work hard, get good grades, go to college. These are productive, tax-paying, child-rearing adults who believed in the system and are now discovering the system was full of sugar honey iced tea.

One of the most persistent myths in modern politics is that revolutions are driven by the poorest of the poor rising up against the elite. In reality, the poor rarely revolt. They lack the time, capital, coordination, and often hope. They are busy trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.

The French Revolution wasn’t started by starving peasants, but by lawyers, merchants, and the educated urban middle class. The American Revolution wasn’t led by poor farmers, but by academics, merchants, lawyers, and landowners. People like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton were all part of what we now call the professional class.

Even the Protestant Reformation followed this pattern. It was not illiterate serfs who translated the Bible, printed pamphlets, and debated theology. It was university-trained clergymen, locksmiths, chandlers, and urban merchants who had enough economic security to challenge the spiritual monopoly of Rome and the corrupted Catholic leaders.

The bourgeois class is inherently conservative. I’m not sure if MAGA and the modern Right realize or care to realize it, but it is the truth. Not Bush-era conservative, or even Nixon-era conservative (which I could argue was not conservative at all), but William F. Buckley conservative. They saw things they loved—their families, their communities, their beautiful neighborhoods—and wanted to conserve them. These people marry. They have children. They buy homes. They save for college. They worry about zoning laws, school quality, crime, and inflation. They have skin in the game.

The Fortune article highlights a not-so-quiet panic among mid-career professionals who are suddenly discovering that pursuing college degrees is a hamster wheel, not a ladder. These Americans are not demanding socialism. They are demanding stable jobs, consistent income potential, and the ability to support a family on one income.

Yet, the GOP has often kept these voters at arm's distance, as if living within city limits disqualifies you from loving your country. This is a critical mistake as the 2026 midterms approach.

Urban professionals have often been the driving force behind political change. They have the resources, energy, education, influence, and connections needed to make things happen.

The collapse of the Weimar Republic followed this script to the letter. Germany’s middle class was crushed between inflation and incompetence, and their loss of confidence opened the door to extremism. In a more subtle way, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s relied heavily on black church leaders, teachers, lawyers, and Jewish activists—bourgeois leaders who translated moral outrage into organized action.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Chicago, especially during the Long Gilded Age, was held together and maintained by the working class. That class has been slowly squeezed. Economic malfeasance hollowed out career opportunities. Political corruption turned Chicago into a national punchline. Progressive social policy made public disorder a permanent feature rather than a temporary failure. The result is a professional class that pays for everything through taxation, has its voices drowned out by the mob of progressives, and is blamed for problems it did not create.

Today, the Chicago Flips Red movement is led by working-class professionals. Disaffected liberals fed up with the incompetence and ineptitude of Democrats. Inner-city bourgeoisie workers whom many Republicans won’t reach out to.

Many people, some on the Right, misunderstand what “Make America Great Again” truly represents. At its heart, MAGA tapped into a populist spirit. It’s not just about anti-elitism. There was a deeper frustration with power that feels unreachable and heartless. Populism isn’t about resenting someone who earns more; a school principal or a successful entrepreneur isn’t the enemy. The real elites are the career politicians, faceless bureaucrats, and the wealthy operatives who can wield power and never face consequences.

When Republicans group the middle class with corrupt bureaucrats, they push away the very people who could help keep conservatism strong in the long run.

If Republicans are serious, they need to address the economic and social worries of the middle class. If the GOP keeps looking down on urban professionals, it will push them toward the liberals, who are ready to offer them socialist rainbows and unicorns. But if Republicans remember that the middle class built America’s cities, funded its institutions, and is a strong political ally, they can build a coalition that lasts long after Trump is gone.

Here’s what the GOP needs to do: grab a dictionary and look up the word bourgeois. It means “of, relating to, or characteristic of the social middle class.” Is that not a voter bloc worth going after? The Democrats surely will and have been for some time. If the GOP wants to hand the midterms to the Democrats, then continue to ignore the bourgeoisie workers.

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