Rebel Yell Part II: How Reagan-Bush Republicans awakened the Balrogs of economic, immigration, and identity politics that Donald Trump used to crush them

Walter Russell Mead

Source Link

The last 35 years have seen a resurgence of the Jacksonian populism that once defined politics across much of the white South. The culture and political beliefs of the post-Reconstruction South, moreover, have dramatically expanded their reach: Jacksonian America is no longer confined to the Ozarks and Appalachia. The spirit of resistance to the Eastern financial and cultural establishment, to the quasi-official national culture the establishment promotes, to a federal government largely shaped by establishment values, and to local politicians and powerbrokers who align themselves with the snooty and imperious Ivy League Yankee Northeast, now dominates much of the country.

For those with eyes to see, there were many signs of a looming explosion. But for much if not all of the last eight years, the pro-business, pro-international engagement wing of the Republican Party turned a blind eye to what they didn’t want to see. Many Reagan Republicans were as confused by the defection of their political base as they were horrified by the rise of Donald Trump. Stirring calls for American world leadership and hymns of praise to a free-market economy had worked wonders for Ronald Reagan and brought George W. Bush to the White House. But when presidential candidates blew the old trumpets in 2016 and again in 2024, nobody came running. Instead, the voters flocked to Trump rallies by the tens of thousands, leaving the Reaganites on the fringes of a party they once had dominated.