Liz Cheney Derides Jim Banks' GOP Working-Class Memo as Neo-Marxist

House Republican Conference chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) slammed Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks’ (R-IN) memo Monday as Neo-Marxist.

Banks wrote a letter to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in March, charging that House Republicans must embrace issues important to working-class voters if they wish to take back the House majority during the 2022 midterm elections.

“President Trump gave the Republican Party a political gift: we are now the party supported by most working-class voters,” the Hoosier Republican wrote in the memo. “The question is whether Republicans reject that gift or unwrap it and permanently become the Party of the Working Class.”

However, not all members of the House Republican Conference agree with Banks’ sentiment.

During a call with the Congressional Institute last week, Cheney rebuked the call for making the Republican Party the party of working-class voters.

“Cheney argued the GOP is not the party of class warfare and that dividing society into classes while attacking the private sector is neo-Marxist and wrong,” Politico’s Melanie Zanona wrote.

Cheney’s attacks against Banks’ memo highlighted a stark contrast between the competing visions for the House Republican Conference. In Cheney’s view, the House GOP would embrace the more traditional, establishment positions of former House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan. In Banks’ vision, Republicans would embrace the working-class coalition Donald Trump established in 2016.

“Democrats will keep alienating working-class voters because that’s what their donors demand, and Republicans should welcome them with open arms by fully embracing an agenda that’s worthy of their support,” Banks wrote in his memo to McCarthy.

Further, while Cheney has engendered controversy with her vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump, according to the Washington Post, Banks has been “helping to drive GOP messaging the Democrat plans.”

“They feel like America is dramatically changing right before their eyes — I hear it everywhere I go,” Banks said Monday regarding voters’ concerns during the House recess.