Mike Pence is preparing to launch a new organization built around advancing Reaganite conservative values in the face of a populist wave within the Republican Party. Michael is not impressed. 

I would recommend you read his piece here, but the gist of his argument is that Pence is representative of a brand of Republicanism that was and is deferential to institutions without recognizing that the ground has shifted, and those institutions have been captured by the Left, and must be treated as such. He argues that Pence “doesn’t know what time it is” — a phrase my friend Dave Reaboi and others on the New Right have been employing in recent years. 

I acknowledge that Pence is an imperfect messenger. Michael highlights how he caved on religious freedom as governor of Indiana under pressure from corporations. I would add to that his decision to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion at the behest of hospital lobbyists. 

That having been said, there are a dwindling number of Republican figures willing to offer real talk about our fiscal challenges and our need to reform entitlements. Few are willing to defend constitutional conservatism and free markets against the charge that it would be unilateral disarmament if we refrain from using the state to bludgeon our enemies in the private sector. So it is laudable that Pence is making an effort to do so, even if there’s no obvious political payoff.

At the same time, Michael argues that populism should not be treated as incompatible with conservatism nor should we ignore its contributions — the populists were earlier skeptics of Covid restrictions, for instance. 

There has always been a temptation by intellectuals to embrace populism in the hopes they can extract the good stuff and steer its energy toward positive ends – but from the French Revolution to the Capitol riot, there is a long history of populist movements becoming mindless, uncontrollable, and violent. It’s good to have a conservatism that recognizes these dangers. 

I would relate this to a broader discussion that is happening right now as Nikki Haley heads for defeat in her home state of South Carolina and Donald Trump takes another step toward formally becoming the Republican nominee (which the Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio sees as the end of the last Reagan conservative). Michael expresses annoyance at the insistence on talking about Reagan Republicanism decades after he left office. 

Though it’s easy to see what’s happening in the Republican Party as the death knell for the old Reaganite brand and urge people to just move on, it’s worth noting that we don’t really have a sense of where the GOP will end up ideologically once Trump exits the political scene. 

It’s easy to point to Pence’s failures and Haley’s impending loss and say that the old style of conservatism will never come back. But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was the candidate who most represented the New Right. He was willing to use the levers of government to battle wokeness. He ran against Trump from the right — arguing that the former president did the bidding of Anthony Fauci, that he never got the border wall done, that he signed criminal justice reform, and so on. He essentially tried to distill Trumpism to its supposed ideological elements and argue he would be more effective at advancing this agenda. Meanwhile, Trump attacked DeSantis for going too far against Disney, for being too harsh in restricting abortion, and so on. And DeSantis got trounced worse than Haley. 

While Reagan obviously benefitted from the politics of personality, he also had a clear ideological brand — limited government, moral values, patriotism, peace through strength, etc. — that was able to survive beyond him and adapt to challenges that followed. But it’s hard to see what philosophical legacy Trump will leave behind. If the conservatives who “know what time it is” believe that the future of Republicanism is standing up to woke corporations, what does it say that in addition to criticizing DeSantis on Disney, Trump has more recently been out there telling supporters to bury the hatchet with Bud Light? If nothing else, the Republican primaries should caution us against conflating populism, Trumpism, and the New Right.

As far as I can tell, the lesson of 2024 is not that one ideological brand of conservatism is the future and one will be relegated to history. All it tells me is that Republicans still overwhelmingly support Trump. And that reality distorts any efforts to project where Republican politics will go when he is no longer around.

It’s possible that some form of populism or New Rightism will supplant traditional three-legged stool conservatism for good. But it’s also possible that a combination of our international challenges and the implosion of our entitlement system will bring back interest in limited government at home and the projection of American power abroad. Nobody knows for sure. So it’s a worthy project for Pence to form an organization that, if successful, could help serve as an incubator for constitutional conservatism when that time comes.