Gerard Baker writes in the Times UK, in an age of uncommon political turbulence, Ronald Reagan remains the still point in political conservatives' turning world—the secular saint whose intercession they must seek.
No politician on the right has been electorally more successful in the past century. The rededication of the conservative movement under him led to the ideals of free markets and small government at home, and the confident assertion of US values and power abroad.
The ascendancy of the so-called neoliberal model that Reagan espoused was so great that it reshaped the politics of the right and the left, pulling the latter back toward the middle. Along with Margaret Thatcher in Britain, he helped reset the parameters of debate in much of the world.
But this year, his party seems to have escaped its thrall to the Reagan supremacy. The candidates and the party’s establishment still make their homage... but for many of the leading figures—and a large number of rank-and-file on the right—it feels more like nostalgia than commitment to his political creed.
In practice many of the defining elements of the Reagan canon have been jettisoned. Note the myopic America First hostility toward global alliances, along with apparent tastes for foreign autocrats... easy support for large and growing gov't spending programs such as Medicare and Social Security... immigration restrictionism, free trade scepticism and the embrace of tariffs... and, perhaps above all, a sensibility that big gov't can and should be used to actively control and promote the interests of ordinary [apparently helpless] Americans.
Tension between populists and more ideologically pure conservatives has long been evident in the broad coalition that makes up the American right. As Matthew Continetti notes, populist fortunes have waxed and waned as the saliency of economic, social and cultural factors has fluctuated.
For now, it looks as though the tension has been resolved—and the Reagan legatees have lost. Not, to be sure, in the party’s senior ranks in Washington or among many of the more thoughtful protagonists in conservative media and think tanks, but surely among the grassroots and its leading presidential contenders.
To Sum It Up: The number of times a leading conservative has commented in the past few years that Reagan would be turning in his grave at some new populist declaration or posture used to be a good indicator of how alien the populism phenomenon was to conservative idealism. Now it seems more like a reliable sign of how alien Reagan is to the modern conservative temper.
Our Take: A recent report published by American Compass assessed the views of Republican voters as expressed by support for ideas judged either Reaganite or populist. More than 40% hold views identified as populist, while fewer than 30% are Reaganite. That's a big problem—for conservatives, America and the world