The intro blurb, "Historian Rick Perlstein has spent 20 years studying the roots of American conservatism. His latest book, 'Reaganland,' is about the events that propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House and made him a revered figure among Republicans. He says that "viciousness and a naked will to power" has always been part of the conservative Republican coalition."
That podcast "blurb" is idiotic.
While it's true that the Reagan "revolution" swept into government some non-traditional, non-establishment Republicans―Reagan probably was not always aware of the oddities of some of his followers and perhaps, in fact, already may have been suffering at the beginning of his presidential term from the dementia that ultimately killed him―during most of the 20th Century and the early years of the 21st, the Republican Party probably could best have been characterized as center-right, internationalist, and dedicated to
restraint in the use of federal power.
The American "conservative" position was and continues to have an even broader base, encompassing libertarian skepticism about the exercise of government authority, deregulation of commercial activity during the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations, and a methodological preference for legislative over executive or judicial action and for state (localized) over federal (national) statutory enactments.
And now for something completely different: Trumpism. It's neither Republican nor conservative by any plausible stretch of the imagination. It's a classical populist movement, probably aligned more closely to the left wing of the Democratic Party than to any faction within the Republican Party except evangelicals obsessed with federal abortion policy and "social issues" such as gay marriage, both of which have limited traction among the public at large.
Oh, yes: and immigration―an issue that pits the Trumpisitos directly against the business interests that have traditionally been at the center of the Republican Party.
Poll
