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Reaganism Is Dead
President Reagan’s final resting place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. CrackerClips Stock Media / Shutterstock.com
A longtime Republican conservative emailed me after Trump’s Tuesday night romp through the “Acela corridor.” “Is the GOP now the anti-trade, anti-immigrant party?”
I don’t think so, but take no comfort in the reason — Republicans haven’t signed on to protectionism and nativism (or at least, only a minority has), but they seem to have lost all philosophical coherence.
The lesson of the Ted Cruz campaign is that the party faithful are not nearly as conservative as some had thought. Even among “very conservative” voters in New York, Cruz carried only 27 percent of them. Were Empire State voters were still smarting from Cruz’s “New York values” snipe? Maybe, but Cruz won only 29 percent of “very conservatives” in Alabama, 31 percent in Virginia, and 41 percent in Pennsylvania. Cruz has worked assiduously to showcase his conservative bona fides, and while purists might raise an eyebrow at some of his foreign policy stands and his flip-flopping on trade, he passes every other conservative litmus test with deep dye. Yet even among very conservative voters, he failed to close the deal.
A lot of ink has been spilled analyzing why Trump was able to run away with Cruz’s “evangelical” voters, but less to the vertigo-inducing reality that people who call themselves conservative, even “very” conservative, can vote for someone like Trump – a liberal-leaning, Planned Parenthood-defending, Code Pink-echoing, flamboyantly ignorant swindler.
Anger about immigration isn’t it. I’ve always been a mushy moderate on immigration. At least with regard to Mexico, it’s a problem on the way to solving itself. The “wall” would be the greatest waste of money since the feds created the Department of Education – and threatening to dun Mexico for the cost is sheer flim-flammery. Still, I was willing to entertain the idea that voters were really exercised about it as an explanation for the Trump rise – until I looked at exit polls.
Since Iowa, voters have been asked to rank issues by importance. In New Hampshire, only 15 percent of voters put immigration at the top of their list of concerns. Fifty-six percent favored a path to legalization for illegals living and working here. In South Carolina, even fewer (10 percent) ranked immigration first among issues of concern and 53 percent favored that path to legalization. These results were replicated in the nearly every state that has held a primary so far. Among Republicans in Pennsylvania, for example, fewer than 40 percent favored deportation of illegal immigrants, yet Trump won nearly 57 percent of the vote.
The exception to this rule is the large number of voters who approve of Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from the US – a very new wrinkle on the old immigration issue.
Trade has loomed large in a few states, like Michigan and Pennsylvania, but has been more mixed elsewhere, with voters divided on whether it helps or hurts the economy.
So the answer to my friend is that Republicans are not voting on issues, they are voting on personality and attitude, and thus revealing themselves to have fallen for one of the worst errors of the left – the progressive belief that all will be well provided the “right” people, the “best people” if you will, are running the government.
“This is the end of Reaganism,” former Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative hero, told me. The three-legged stool of strong defense, small government, and conservatism on social issues has been smashed. Republicans, or at least a plurality of Republican primary voters, no longer distrust government per se, they simply distrust this government. They dislike Obama and the Republican leadership. But they’re ready to believe that an outsider will be able to bring his annealing touch to the economy, to the culture, and to national greatness. If a Republican politician today were to tell the joke about “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” – a reliable punch line in the Reagan repertoire – he or she would be greeted by incomprehension. This is a signal victory for the left: The triumph of faith in the state. Trumpites are reprising Obama’s “Yes We Can” with a new lead.
Republican politicians cannot rely on the healthy skepticism about government that was once woven into the fabric of the party. People used to know that bigger government enables more corruption, that the mediating institutions of society like family, church, and community organizations are better at nearly every task than bureaucracies, and that government undermines these institutions when it expands too much.
“All kings is mostly rapscallions as fur as I can make out” explained Huck Finn, a good American constitutionalist. It’s a lesson the Republican Party will have to relearn when this season passes.
Published in General
Reagan is dead. Move on.
Mona, if you ask the average Republican in an exit poll what is your most important issue and they say “the economy” or “terrorism and/or national security” you can not then trumpet the notion that they have given up on caring about immigration — dealing with illegal immigration or lax legal immigration is the keystone to dealing with the economy or national security. Two parallel fences 30 yards apart with a dirt road between them for border patrol jeeps would be the most efficient capital expenditure our country has made since the interstate highway system.
What a great post. I agree with every word of it.
There’s something strange going on in conservatism, and in politics generally. Here in Alberta, we were considered to be one of the most conservative populations in North America. We hadn’t elected a non-conservative government since 1935. But last year not only did we elect a socialist government, we elected them in a landslide. It only took a few months for that government’s popularity to plummet to where you’d expect in a conservative province, but we still did it.
I think mass communication, the internet, social media, and the general breakdown of borders in terms of idea sharing have much to do with it. The world is much more left-wing than America or Alberta, and at least online the world now gets a say in our politics. People in North America watch TV programming made in Europe and elsewhere regularly, where the assumptions and messages can be very different. Movies are targeted at global audiences, and therefore no longer reflect ‘American Values’.
Then there’s the effect of the left’s long march through our institutions. They’ve become the gatekeepers, and they’re filtering what we learn, read, and watch.
The result of this is intellectual incoherence and confusion. Maybe the Trump phenomenon has to do with people on the right wanting a leader who has a clear, simple message that he will restore the clarity of the past: “Make America great again! Throw out the foreigners! Close the borders! Protect Americans from foreign trade! Elect me, and I’ll roll back the clock to 1985.” You can see how that would indeed be an appealing message to people who feel constantly buffeted by forces outside their control and who are watching their values and culture being constantly under attack. Unfortunately, it’s a populist fairy tale.
In an age of intellectual confusion due to poor education and where ideas have to survive a cacaphony of conflicting voices from around the world, maybe the person with the loudest voice and the simplest message is destined to gain power.
Bush 43 killed Reaganism by talking like Reagan while pushing economic policy to the left of even the Clinton administration.
Rhetoric went right, policy went left and the economy went south. As a result people blamed the 2008 crisis on free markets. No one attempted a defense and Reaganism died.
That said, the primary isn’t over yet. Maybe Reaganism can be resuscitated.
Mona,
I will never forget listening to Obama’s First Inaugural address during my second semester of law school. I looked around at all of the faces of the law students, I listened to the pundits, I saw the teeming crowds. Everyone ignored what the man said. The moment was historic, they were a part of it, the substance was not relevant.
I encourage you to re-read the speech, as painful as it is. In this speech, Obama declared that everything Reagan stood for is a “stale political question.” It was like someone had taken a a knife and stabbed me in the gut. Obama’s target was Reagan’s America. Never again would a Democrat say “the era of Big Government is over.”
And that’s why I argue in Trump’s Paternalism – Daddy’s Here that Donald Trump is the logical extension of Barack Obama. Whether we elect Hillary or Donald, it will be, philosophically, Obama’s third term.
That’s why Indiana must, absolutely must, vote for Cruz if we have any chance to save the soul of the party and if we have any chance to save the electoral consensus that sustains and grows the conservative movement.
Josh Farnsworth
I honestly believe a major problem is that far to few people actually understand what conservatism is anymore. For example millions like to talk about Reagan’s “three-legged stool” conservatism, but that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reagan believed in. You see Ronald Reagan’s understanding of conservatism came straight from the ideals of as expressed by Frank Meyer.
In a speech entitled “Our Philosophy Of Government” Ronald Reagan made this point as clear as can be. He gave this speech at C-Pac in 1981 here talked about what Frank Meyer taught us all decades ago:
We don’t talk about our philosophy anymore. We’ve spent so many years worrying about how to win, that we forgot the reason we want to win. Our philosophy. Is it any wonder that people are now voting for a stage show over ideals? Those of us who have them rarely even talk about them anymore. It’s all connected.
Following on Bastiat Junior’s #4 please remind when was the era of limited gov’t. I was born in 67 and confident I’ve not experienced it in my lifetime.
I think this is very important. Everyone who feigns shock at what Obama foisted on this nation wasn’t paying attention.
I contend he has governed exactly as he said he would. His word craft and oration presented it nice.
Regarding the cult of personality and presidential candidates it is real. Reagan was a unique blend of substance and form.
I’ve noticed some folks here and elsewhere lately commenting that when they stop worrying about Cruz’s tone or being the son of a Pastor, etc. and listen to the substance of what he says they warm to him.
He said some very powerful things about Carly Fiorina yesterday, but all most people remember is that she sang a children’s song.
The Bushes have a lot to answer for. Not only did both of them govern to the left of their own promises and rhetoric, but the Bush family has this twisted sense of patrician honor that tells them the role of an ex-president is to get out of the way and not interfere in politics any more. As a result, the left didn’t have to worry about being opposed by the ex-presidents who might have had some gravitas to bring to the debate. The Bushes excused themselves from the fray, skewing it to the left and ceding the issues of the day to Obama and his ilk without opposition. They act more like retired CEOs than leaders of an ongoing political movement.
Another huge source of damage and incoherence on the right has been the quality of its cheerleaders. Gone are the days when the intellectual leaders of the right were people like Reagan, William F. Buckley, and Milton Friedman. Now we’ve got semi-knowledgeable blowhards like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly driving the car by ginning up discontent without intellectual substance. They have armies of fans who think of themselves as conservatives, who who are just tribal members with a chip on their shoulder.
We always knew such people made up part of the ‘base’, but now we’re learning that it may have been a lot larger group than we thought. These are low-information voters who are conservative by temperament perhaps, but who do not have a solid set of core conservative beliefs because the people they listen to are incapable of educating them* beyond soundbites and slogans. They’re really good at making them angry, though. Discussions of moral and economic philosophy have been replaced by lists of enemy ‘pinheads’ and ‘morons’.
*Limbaugh back in the day used to be much more willing to explain core conservative principles in a coherent way. Beck has done the same. So I would put those two ahead of Hannity, O’Reilly, and some of the other bloggers and on-air personnel on the right, at least in terms of their ability to articulate principles. I haven’t listened to either for years, so I can’t say how they’re behaving now.
Rod Dreher, in a similarly themed article at AmCon, pointed out a ten year old article by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam that predicted the rise of Trump and its relation to the death of Reaganism.
Highly Recommend.
Reaganism was itself personality based. It is the case today, and always has been, the people say certain things are what drive their vote, but that is not how they vote. They vote based on personality, and whether or not the individual appeals to them. Only about 10-15% really care about issues, and most of them are found here. The individuals here know a lot more about real issues than almost any “typical” American voter. Most think at the level of Free stuff – Good, Republican conservatives want to take my free stuff, I won’t vote for them. Education is leftist and has been for 50 years, the media is mostly leftist, the language is taught from a leftist position, and even nominal conservatives accept the lefts positions as the middle of the road, and any conservative idea starts out as extremist. We start arguments by compromising from a leftist position, the get a little less of leftism, we never argue from a conservative position and take something a little less conservative. So over time we always lose.
The details of positions don’t interest most, they bore them. That is why discussions are always about what someone called someone else or what the latest polls said, never about issues. Issues bore most people, they have a position they mouth when pushed, but they don’t do anything to support it especially vote for it.
I am a small government conservative, and I know only about 10-15% of voters really want to shrink government. Most bail as soon as a program they like grows less fast than they want. It is also why “cuts” never happen to the budget, only reductions in the rate of growth, sold as draconian cuts.
It is terribly frustrating, but how the world is, and we need to start where the left did, with culture and education, and maybe in a hundred years or so, possibly have an actual conservative position be believed.
85 percent don’t care about issues? I beg to differ. Campaign on a long war and privatizing social security and see what happens. It’s called 2006 and 2008.
I’ve got 17 years on you, Brent, and be assured I’ve not seen it either. My oldest brother has another 10 years on me, but he was too young to realize what the master rapscallion FDR was unleashing on a fearful citizenry. Much groundwork for the explosion of statism occurred before FDR, mainly initiated by Wilson and his fascist allies, including dear Teddy, but FDR was at the helm when the newly bloated ship of state went over the falls. (Metaphor alert!)
And please remember, dear readers, that fascism used to be quite mainstream and all the rage among western government elites at the beginning of the 20th century.
P.S. What the devil is this nativism that Mona posits? Can’t we have a moratorium on neologistic “isms”?
I was born in ’59 and haven’t it experienced either. However, during the Reagan years, we had a president who wanted to shrink the government, and hoped that – if his legacy continued – that process would begin.
Sadly, his legacy was betrayed by his own Vice President.
To answer your question, you have to go back to Coolidge to find actual small government.
Reagan had a coherent set of ideas formulated before he took office. Personality by itself wouldn’t have done it.
Presidents Harding and Coolidge were able to reverse a lot of the damage done by Wilson. Then Herbert Hoover, the Bush of that era, reversed course and the rest is history.
Mob-mentality Northeasterners, Maine voters excepted?
The liberal Northeasterners seem to see Trump as a liberal and vote for him.
I don’t believe that conservative Northeasterners really exist in any great number, but the more conservative Northeasterners seems to see Trump as a conservative and vote for him. Conservative Southerners seem to be the same way.
Long Island voted about 70% for Trump. Cruz should have said that “New York values” does not include Republican Staten Island. Trump won 82% of the vote on Staten Island.
I’ve listened to Trump voters call into radio talk show. They never make any sense.
Cruz voters use their brain to determine their votes. Kasich voters seem to use their hearts to determine their votes.
Trump voters seem to use a gut-level, blood instinct to determine their votes. Rush Limbaugh might be right in the theory that you can never change the mind of a Trump voter. I would have thought there was a small chance of turning a Trump voter around, but they aren’t using reason and information. It’s more of a gut-level “us versus them” identity psychology. It’s almost like a religion with some of them.
Quite correct, of course. I was astonished to read about and see pictures of Hooverville. But FDR really put the cat-o-nine to the donkey.
This is why I confront Trump supporters and Trump sympathizers – I present them constantly with the facts of their choice. That way they can’t say “nobody warned me” when we round up Muslims, slap a 45 percent tariff on imports from disfavored nations, and repeal the first amendment. I don’t want to read “I had no idea” claims after we are subjected to Trump’s tyranny.
They are simply using reason and information unfamiliar to you, perhaps? At a certain level, it really is an “us vs. them” mentality, but the “them” is the Republicat weasels in DC, and the “us” is we gullible citizens who are fed up with the diet of lies.
Move on to what?
One of the enduring values of conservatism is that it looks back on the principles and traditions of the past without shrieking in horror.
Slavery, Jim Crow, and many other things were bad. We have, quite rightly, left them behind.
But not everything about the past was bad (traditional marriage, a shared moral code, American exceptionalism, American confidence, the free enterprise system), and one of the great things about our past was the principled conservatism of Ronald Reagan.
Yes, he’s dead. But the ideas that animated him need not die.
So if moving on means embracing the horror that is the Donald, no thanks. I’m happy to continue to embrace the past.
One’s thing’s sure: Donald Trump is not and never will be the heir of Reagan.
True. Hoover begat FDR similar to the way Bush begat Obama.
Must be great to have sole command of the “facts”. You might try conversation and discussion rather than confrontation, that is if you are interested in making a difference.
Perfect comparison! Thank you.
1000 likes for this one!
That worked even better than I thought it would, lol.
“Rush Limbaugh might be right in the you can never change the mind of a Trump voter” – if they cannot be persuaded, why try to persuade? I just inform that way they won’t have the “nobody told me he was such a bad guy” excuse once he eviscerates our constitution and destroys our economy.
I think a lot of people today have a poor memory of just how much intellectual heft Reagan brought to his campaigns.
Reagan burst onto the political scene during the Goldwater campaign by giving this speech:
That’s still one of the best political speeches I’ve seen. And Reagan wrote it. If you’ve never watched it, please do.
As a spokesman for GE, Reagan toured factories and offices around the country for years, learning how average people worked and created value. He had a degree in economics, and was a voracious reader who cut his teeth on Kirk, Bastiat, Friedman, and other thinkers on the right. Before he became President, he reached out to people and educated them with weekly radio addresses.
The left always tried to portray Reagan as an amiable dunce. Partly this was because he had a laid-back demeanor and seemed rather grandfatherly. But they also did this as a sideways attack on his ideas and philosophy, because he was too good a debater for a frontal assault.
By his own admission, Reagan was a C student in economics, but he had a grasp of the fundamentals that is still beyond the reach of people like Benjamin Bernanke. Thomas Picketty etc.