Previewing the 2024 Republican Platform
By 
Stephen Moore is just joining a chorus of Republicans longing for the good old days of child labor.
The White House review comes as Mr. Moore is dealing with a nearly daily barrage of newly unearthed comments from his extensive paper and video trail as a conservative provocateur. Many of the statements, including Mr. Moore’s comments about women’s pay, were not presented as jokes or couched in humor.
During a 2016 debate on the minimum wage, for example, Mr. Moore talked about how to get more Americans into the labor force. In a serious tone, Mr. Moore said he would like to see more preteens working.
“I’m a radical on this,” he said. “I’d get rid of a lot of these child labor laws. I want people starting to work at 11, 12.”
The writings and statements under scrutiny span nearly two decades of Mr. Moore’s career. They include one, which Mr. Moore has called an attempt at humor, that called for women to be barred from officiating or serving beer at N.C.A.A. men’s basketball games.
In 2014, Mr. Moore wrote a column for National Review, in which he said women earning more than men “could be disruptive to family stability.” Asked about that column on Sunday, Mr. Moore did not apologize, but said that strong economic growth under Mr. Trump was helping women and was the best way to reduce the gender pay gap.
Mr. Moore has expressed strong reservations about women working in the past. In December 2000, he fielded questions from C-Span viewers for an hour. A caller asked Mr. Moore about statistics that showed black women earning more than black men in America.
“It’s not a good thing that black women are making more than black men today,” Mr. Moore replied. “In fact, you know, the male needs to be the breadwinner of the family. One of the reasons you’ve seen the decline of the family, not just in the black community, but also it’s happening now in the white community as well, is because women are more economically self-sufficient.”
Don’t know if this will torpedo Moore’s nomination for a position he is completely unqualified for, but it is nice to get an early preview of the upcoming mainstream position of the Republican Party on race, gender, and labor.