Reformicons & the Future of the Right
In 2005, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam wrote a piece at The Weekly Standard titled “The Party of Sam’s Club” following it up three years later with a book called Grand New Party. Douthat and Salam’s work was the creation of a new branch of conservatism whose adherents started to call themselves “Reform Conservatives” or “reformicons,” for short. The focus of the reform conservative movement was to address the frustration of mostly Republican Party voters at the failures of the George W. Bush Administration and the perceived arrogance and the flawed direction the Obama White House wanted to take the United States years later.
Essentially, the reformicons’ focus was on expanding the space between the individual and government, cultivating that space where civil society could thrive. Individuals would participate and find meaning in this space of civil society while the government would focus on protecting that space from outside threats.
The reform conservatives’ manifesto entitled Room to Grow emphasized a new guide for GOP policymakers that moved beyond the Reagan ‘82 playbook of combining tax cuts, budget cuts, and economic deregulation. Instead, it focused on “applying Reaganite principles to today’s problems.” This meant a transition away from the image of the Republican Party being the party of the country-club and big business towards working- and middle-class families through various market-focused policies such as healthcare reform and an expansion of the child tax credit.
The reformicons gained prominence and influence throughout the Right during the Obama Administration, gaining the likes of policymakers such as Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and Paul Ryan to start putting reform conservatism’s hopes and dreams into real public policy. The future was bright. Then an earthquake happened.
In 2016, the reformicons’ candidate was Florida Senator Marco Rubio. What they got instead was Donald Trump.
The rise of the Trumpian takeover of the GOP both helped and hurt the reform conservatives. President Trump was able to address the needs of the working class and bring about a realignment of American politics—something that Douthat and Salam spoke of at length in their Grand New Party.
However, Trump’s two main issues, immigration and trade, were issues missing from the reform conservatives platform as laid out in Room to Grow. Trump understood what the reformicons had been saying: the GOP needed to become the party of workers, and conservatism had to be updated to address that political reality. Trump then put his own spin on it, becoming reform conservatism’s “evil twin.” As Matthew Continetti put it, “The Party of Sam’s Club became the Party of Trump.”
Yet, the rise of Trumpism missed key elements of the reformicon message, putting the reformicons at a disadvantage in the current debates on the right. Reform conservatism's focus was on addressing the needs of workers and families through market-oriented solutions; a combination of Tea Party populism and libertarian economics.
Instead, what is seen on the right today is a disregard for the market. What is seen within the new nationalist/populist/Catholic integralist movement is an argument in opposition to classical liberalism and the free market in favor of government planning for the “common good.” This includes the likes of Sohrab Ahmari, Tucker Carlson, Josh Hawley, Oren Cass, and even now, Marco Rubio himself all under the guise of some sort of “National Conservative” movement.
As Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru put it in National Review, these nationalists/integralists “believe the crisis of American life (or at least of the American working class) was deeper, and the sclerosis of the Republican coalition more severe, than the earlier reformist diagnosis allowed. They tend not to worry about how government power developed with one party in mind might be used or abused by the other.”
In short, reform conservatism turned out to be absolutely correct. But then they disappeared, left in the dust as the reform part of reform conservative separated itself from the conservative part. Why?
The answer, as Levin and Ponnuru believe it to be, is, “Because Trumpism has for the most part not been embodied in particular policy proposals, different factions on the right have tried to claim its power for their own, and to insist that Trump’s success in 2016 is proof of principle for a new direction.” Reform conservatives wanted nothing to do with Trump, but his personal popularity outlasted the reformicons popularity in policy, leading to the movement’s doom.
The story of reform conservatism’s rise and fall in relation to the rise of Trumpian populism and the state of the Republican Party and the conservative movement today provides many important and valuable lessons for the future of the American right. Everything that was thought to be commonly understood (fusionism, the importance of the free market, the role of government) is up for grabs.
So, what will make up the new American Right?
One explanation is that not much will change from the pre-Trump era. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey of political typology among voters found that Republican voters broke down into four groups: Core Conservatives, Country-First Conservatives, Market-Skeptic Republicans, and New-Era Enterprisers. The majority of Republican voters (about one-third) considered themselves to be “Core Conservatives,” holding traditional Republican and conservative views on the economy, the role of government, and America’s role in the world.
In the study, Core Conservatives are followed by “Country-First Conservatives” (older voters who are less skeptical of America’s role abroad, less educated, and more skeptical of immigration) and “Market-Skeptic Republicans” (those who are skeptical of corporations and believe that the system is rigged against them by the rich). “New Era Enterprisers” round out the Republican coalition and these voters are younger, more diverse, and favorable to immigration.
Core Conservatives and New Era Enterprisers together make up the dominant majority of the GOP, followed by the Country-First Conservatives and then the Market-Skeptical Republicans. If this still holds in 2020, then the right would, in theory, become more favorable to free enterprise, limited government, and immigration.
But, the Trump factor still exists. According to a November 2019 Morning Consult survey, 79% of all Republican voters say he has changed the party for the better. However, 47% of Republicans say the change that Trump has brought is temporary, while 36% of Republicans say the change is permanent. In the same study, 41% of Republicans said Ronald Reagan was their favorite Republican, while 33% said Donald Trump was theirs.
Why does that matter? It matters because Reagan’s favorability over Trump’s among Republicans stands as an important glimpse of what the future GOP might look like: this new GOP would consist of Reagan’s rhetoric, statesmanship, and optimism with a combination of more Trumpian policies on issues like immigration. It would become a party that seeks to address the needs of middle-class families and workers. It would become a party that governs, not yells; something the reformicons tried to make the GOP in their time.
So where does this leave the reform conservatives? The answer is, plainly, that no one knows just yet what their future holds. Their diagnosis of America was correct, but the rise of Trump split their adherent’s opinions and displaced their influence.
Whatever the direction the right does take in the future, it will be wise to heed the words and advice of Levin and Ponnuru. As they said:
“[The right] will need to be serious about both using the power of government and restraining it… It will need to make the most of the strengths of the market economy while acting to address its costs, risks, and dark sides. It will need to put family, community, and country first, to consider where solidarity comes from, and to recognize how freedom can serve it up to a point. And it will need to unite the partisans of markets with the partisans of tradition into a functional coalition—practically at least, if not philosophically.”
Even if the reform conservative movement is dead (which would be a tragedy if it truly is), the principles that it championed will make the GOP and the conservative movement a true governing majority in a country that desperately needs one.
