At the Conservative Political Action Conference, attendees swooned over President Trump. They applauded him even when he advocated policies that used to be anathema to conservatives: paid family leave; economic protectionism; a big public works program.
Rich Lowry, marveling, concluded that President Trump, with his brand of nationalistic conservatism, has triumphed over small-government conservatism. That is to say, the ideology of Ronald Reagan is no longer dominant among conservatives.
If Reaganism is over, Lowry says, the Reaganites themselves are largely to blame. They repeated the same mantras–lower taxes, supply side economics, cutting government–even as American voters moved on to other concerns, such as wage stagnation and (I would add) immigration.
At CPAC, Trump advisor Steve Bannon said that nationalism is what unites conservatives, with small government conservatives being one strain of the larger movement.
What do you think of Bannon’s analysis? Rich Lowry’s? Is Reaganism dead? Or just beaten down for the time being?
Or has Trump, in fact, rebuilt the Reagan coalition of business interests, Christian conservatives, and disaffected blue-collar Democrats?
From Rich Lowry, The end of Reaganism| OregonLive.com:
Trump’s ecstatic reception from the right over the past week is testament to the sheer gratitude of the GOP rank and file that Trump, against all expectations, vanquished the House of Clinton.
Something more fundamental is going on, though. We are witnessing the end of Reaganism, and among the very people who were supposed to be most supportive of it. This doesn’t mean that Trump and Congress won’t pursue conservative policies — tax cuts, a defense buildup and deregulation all have a distinctly Reaganite ring — but the defining commitment of Reaganism to cutting the size of government is clearly fading. . . .
This year at CPAC, Steve Bannon offered a different principle. He posited that nationalism unites the right, and that limited-government conservatives are just one element of the broader coalition. This view encapsulates the change wrought by Trump — in part because Reaganism had become so stale.
The conventional Republicans in the 2016 primary race hewed to Reaganism as a creed frozen in amber circa 1981. It didn’t need significant updating; it just needed reassertion — with feeling. They were too rigid, too insular and too nostalgic. They were beaten by someone who was none of those things (actually, Trump was nostalgic, but not for the Reaganism of the 1980s).
Whereas they mistook all of America for a CPAC ballroom, Trump existed outside the ideological consensus of the GOP and picked up on issues that didn’t enter the worldview of politicians obsessed with the glories of the 1980s, like wage stagnation.
From Rich Lowry, The end of Reaganism| OregonLive.com:
Official Portrait of President Ronald Reagan. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain. By Unknown – http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/DVIC_View/Still_Details.cfm?SDAN=DASC9003096&JPGPath=/Assets/Still/1990/Army/DA-SC-90-03096.JPG, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=257844
At the Conservative Political Action Conference, attendees swooned over President Trump. They applauded him even when he advocated policies that used to be anathema to conservatives: paid family leave; economic protectionism; a big public works program.
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