It’s not hard to understand why so many Republicans admire Ronald Reagan.
“The Great Communicator” sparked a conservative revival that fractured the remnants of the left-wing New Deal coalition. As president, he helped end the Soviet Union, winning the Cold War.
Forty-three years after the Reagan Revolution, and eight years after former President Donald J. Trump changed the game again, none of the Republicans who convened for the first presidential primary debate on Aug. 23 repudiated President Reagan. Even President Trump cited a move by President Reagan as precedent for his decision to skip the debate.
Neither Fox News nor the Republican National Committee, cohosts of the media-heavy event, seem to have lost any love for the icon of 1980s America.
Moderator Brett Baier’s final question to the candidates referenced President Reagan’s frequent declaration that the United States is a “shining city on a hill”–an image from the Book of Matthew, first used to evoke American exceptionalism during Puritan times.
The use of a quotation from President Reagan rather than, say, President Trump could signal the GOP’s hopes of achieving a little distance from their last and now embattled standard-bearer.
That’s not all. The second 2023 debate, like the second debate in 2015, will take place at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
The calendar may read “2023,” but for many in the GOP, President Reagan reigns like it’s the 1980s.
The debate’s breakout star, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, didn’t reject President Reagan’s legacy. He claimed that he alone, among the GOP candidates, could “deliver a Reagan 1980 revolution.”
Yet, other exchanges between the Millennial entrepreneur and former Vice President Mike Pence reflected a generation gap in the prudence and effectiveness of Reagan-style rhetoric and policy. As the closest equivalent to President Trump at the Milwaukee Bucks’ Fiserv Center, Mr. Ramaswamy’s comments underscored the differences between Reaganism and Trumpism.
“The Republican base has moved well beyond Reaganism or political fusionism, which broadly emphasized libertarianism on domestic and economic policy, and neoconservativism on foreign policy, for years,” said Paul Ingrassia, a young Republican lawyer who supports President Trump, in an email interview with The Epoch Times.
By Nathan Worcester
