Secreted in the glass and steel canyons of official Washington lurk those who style themselves Reagan Conservatives. While decades ago, they were viewed as uncivil, uncouth hoards bent on destroying the go-along-to-get-along political infrastructure, the few who remain are viewed with a mixture of pity and suspicion. If not outright malice.
In no small part, that's because those last remaining Reaganauts do not like, and cannot stomach, Donald Trump and his angry brand of populism.
These old-line conservatives have tended to rally around former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's doomed effort to win the GOP nomination. Not because they necessarily like Haley. She just happens to be the last contender standing who refuses to kiss Trump's ring.
But what of those conservatives and their ideas – the ones that long ago transformed Washington, and the Republican party, but are now anathema to the populist new establishment? Are they, like Haley, doomed to irrelevance?
If what pollster Wes Anderson says is true, they are already irrelevant. And worse, there is little sign the GOP that once embraced these old-line conservatives has any intention of doing so again:
“If you have a time machine, and you plop her down in 1989, it's a great speech, and it's something the vast majority of the Republican Party believes in,” Anderson said. “Today, they hear that and say, ‘Oh crap, you don't get it, you're blind.'”
The pollster added that in the focus groups of GOP voters he conducts, it's clear that Republican sentiment, rather than showing signs of snapping back into place, is accelerating further away from the Reagan worldview. If the next wave of GOP presidential candidates wants to win over the base, Anderson said, they should focus less on policies like free-trade agreements than proposing something once regarded as a liberal policy view, like using the full force of government to break up big tech companies.
Republican voters “want to break up Amazon. They want to break up Meta. And they want to break up Google,” he said.
In other words, they want to be what Democrats used to be…say c. 1972, when it nominated that screaming Liberal, Sen. George McGovern. His platform sounds eerily similar to what some in the GOP appear to embrace with both arms today.
What was old is new again. Except for the candidates, of course. As for the pollsters who believe the pols should follow the focus groups, this might be good advice for winning a primary. It's terrible advice for leading a country.
Unless your goal is to make real H.L. Mencken's saying that “if a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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