What Reaganism Was And Why It Still Matters
“Ronald Reagan was the most popular and successful Republican president since Theodore Roosevelt. He was the only president since Ulysses S. Grant to hand his office over to a successor of his own party after serving two full terms. In the space of sixteen years, he had brought the conservative movement from electoral repudiation to the White House. He restored the ethos of ‘Calvinism’ to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Like his conservative predecessor of the 1920s, Reagan cut taxes, lionized the Constitution, and promoted a nonsectarian form of civil religion. Coolidge’s portrait hung on the wall in Reagan’s Oval Office.” – Matthew Continetti, The Right, page 267
The Reagan Coalition was defined by the “three-legged stool” of free markets, traditional virtue, and strong national defense. Gen Xers and Boomers know the three-legged stool well, but sadly many younger readers are only familiar with the Republican Party of the Trump era. Which means that those of us who still believe in economic conservatism (free markets), national security hawkishness (strong national defense), and traditional virtue (social conservatism), can no longer take it for granted that everyone on the right understands these principles and believes in them.
The Republican Party of 2024 has largely given up on the first two. Industrial policy, protectionism, attacks on business and finance, claims that capitalism has eroded the traditional family and destroyed the nation’s moral fabric, and sympathy for a muscular central government (especially in antitrust) have moved the party leftward on economics. Sean O’Casey’s speech at the RNC and J.D. Vance’s admiration for Lina Khan are evidence of that. Dovishness, Jacksonianism, and a loss of faith in the American idea and the American nation have combined to turn the party against military buildup, projecting power abroad, fighting the enemies of freedom, and cultivating alliances. And even the social traditionalism which supposedly defined Trump’s base is disappearing. The founder of SlutWalk spoke at the RNC. The party platform no longer emphasizes the right to life and the party’s standard bearer has endorsed pharmaceutical abortions.
It is worth asking of the Trumpian Republican Party a question the New Right is fond of asking Reaganites, “What has the Republican Party actually conserved?” In 2025, what is the point of the Republican Party, other than to act as a vehicle for one man’s grievances? What motivates the right, other than simply to “fight” the left (even while capitulating to the left on economics, foreign policy, abortion, and sexual morality)?
Many Republican voters agree with this assessment. They may conclude that the Republican Party is better than the Democratic Party, and I won’t argue otherwise (I wrote in my presidential vote in November). Many older Republican voters do still believe in the three-legged stool, and wish we could return to it. In the meantime, they will hold their nose and vote for Trump, or write in.
Many Republican politicians still believe in the three-legged stool, too, even if they don’t fight for it. In his acceptance speech as Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson said this:
“In his farewell address, President Reagan explained the secret of his rapport with people and I like to paraphrase his explanation all the time. He said, “You know, they call me the great communicator, but I really wasn’t that.” He said, “I was just communicating great things and that the same great things have guided our nation since its founding.” What are those great things? I call them the seven core principles of American conservatism, but let me concede to you all. I think it’s really quintessentially the core principles of our nation. I boil them down to individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets and human dignity. Those are the foundations that made us the extraordinary nation that we are, and you and I today are the stewards of those principles, the things that have made us the freest, most powerful, most successful nation in the history of the world, the things that have made us truly exceptional.”
Individual freedom, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets are all hallmarks of economic conservatism – the first leg of the stool. Peace through strength is, of course, Reagan’s signature. It worked to defeat the Soviet Union and it will work to secure American interests today. This is the second leg of the stool. Human dignity – including the sanctity of unborn life – and the rule of law. These are part of the third leg of the stool. The rule of law guarantees that we have civilization, rather than barbarism. It, and peace through strength, are what preserve everything else.
Conservatives used to talk a lot about civilization and barbarism. Some still do. Those of us who believe in civilization know that character matters. Reagan was a fundamentally decent man. So were George W. Bush, his father, Barry Goldwater, and Calvin Coolidge. Donald Trump, whose life has been a celebration of everything social traditionalists claimed to loathe for decades, is not.
But I am not here today to litigate Donald Trump’s flaws, or argue about Donald Trump the man. I am here to argue that the three-legged stool of Reagan conservatism still matters, and that it’s the only way forward for the Republican Party if we wish to conserve what is worth conserving about America – the greatest country in the history of the world.
There are those who argue that the three-legged stool was a coalition between three different groups (hawkish anticommunists, libertarians, and traditionalists) aimed at opposing communism. This is true. What is left out, though, is that it was also a governing philosophy in which each leg of the stool was important for advancing the objectives of the others. And many people believed in all three legs, not just one or two. Many Republican voters still do. Some have temporarily left the party over Trump. But if the Grand Old Party once again stood for fiscal conservatism, peace through strength, and “family values,” many of these voters would gladly return.
The three-legged stool predated Reaganism. Fusionism – the philosophy put forth by Frank Meyer in the pages of National Review – held that liberty and virtue were partners, that the best society was a free and virtuous one, and that neither could stand alone without the other. Derided as a dirty compromise with libertarians by some traditionalists (and as a dirty compromise with traditionalists by some libertarians), this idea lay at the heart of the conservative movement in the second half of the twentieth century.
The third pillar flowed out of anticommunism, which was a defining feature of the right post-1945. The threat of Soviet domination necessitated that this anticommunism develop into a hawkishness on national security issues, much as many on the right preferred not to engage heavily in world affairs.
Reagan’s success cemented these three pillars into the American right, and it was more than two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union that the factions splintered. The rise of Trump in 2015 brought about a rethinking, and many dissidents who had been on the fringes saw an opportunity. Between Trump’s candidacy and bitterness over Iraq and the financial collapse, the country was ripe for a populist-nationalist moment. The coalition identified in the 1990s by Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan (and Donald Trump) was ripe.
We are reaping the consequences of that today. As markets plunge following the foolish announcement on Wednesday of sweeping tariffs on trade from all corners of the world, Americans are already beginning to rue their flirtation with protectionism. Over the next four years, I expect we will learn many hard lessons the hard way, but as Edmund Burke – the founder of conservatism – told us, experience “is the school of mankind” and we will learn our lessons no other way.
If we believe the three pillars of Reagan conservatism are true, then they still matter, even long after Reagan’s death. And if they are true, then the departure from them will wreak havoc in American politics, and someday the public will again be ready for their return.