After voting for Jimmy Carter for the first time in the 1980 presidential election, I was shocked when Ronald Reagan was elected. Then something strange happened. I was inspired by Reagan’s optimism, convinced of the evils of communism, and came to realize that free-market economics—rather than expanded federal power—provided the best for the oppressed (and for everyone) hope. Jeep convinced me.
He enlisted the help of former Buffalo Bills quarterback and then-U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), the architect of the Reagan tax cuts. I was influenced by one of his articles that made a humanitarian case for the market agenda. In a 2015 tribute to him, David Frum wrote: “Kemp symbolized for many the hope for a more decent and humane conservatism that would not allow anyone to be Leave no one out and leave no one behind.
It’s no surprise that Frum, former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and those of us who admired the late congressman cringe at the Republican Party’s recent dark and conspiratorial turns. I can’t find Kemp’s old article, but it’s full of hope for the future, full of realistic policy prescriptions for helping people escape poverty, and it radiates authenticity and intimacy.
This is in stark contrast to what we hear today: wild attacks on political opponents, visions of American carnage, threats of retaliation, rhetoric about immigrants as invaders and other cruel and divisive grandstanding. America was facing tougher problems at the time, so it’s hard to understand where this new perspective came from.
i read camp policy review, then the flagship publication of the conservative Heritage Foundation, was a leader in the Reagan Revolution. Today, the foundation is generally an advocate of the Republican Party’s latest approach—even though many of the current populist ideas of the Republican Party contrast sharply with the economic and foreign policy positions advocated by the Republican Party in the 1980s.
The group (along with a number of former Trump appointees) has led the effort to draft a new document, “Project 2025,” that provides a policy roadmap for the transition should Trump return to the White House. Much of it is disturbing, but it is refreshing to see actual policy prescriptions spelled out. The party’s basic platform since 2016 has been to listen to everything Trump says — and no serious person would consider Trump a policy junkie of any kind.
Liberals are horrified. U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) called Project 2025 “an unprecedented embrace of extremism, fascism and religious nationalism orchestrated by the far right and its dark money backers.” In fact, its more than 900 pages blend traditional policy platforms with MAGA-oriented concepts. It is generally consistent with the neoconservative approach to exercising government power on behalf of conservative causes, rather than Reagan’s laudable goal of limiting government power.
For example, the document explains, “The great challenge facing a conservative president is to aggressively use the immense power of the executive branch to return power, including those currently wielded by the executive branch, to the survival needs of the American people. Meeting this challenge requires… boldness to bend the bureaucracy to bend or break the president’s will, and to use it with self-denial to send power from Washington back to America’s families, faith groups, local governments and states.
Of course, the federal bureaucracy is clumsy and often promotes bureaucrat-sanctioned folly that is at odds with the views of ordinary Americans. But implementing what critics call a “unified executive doctrine” — which puts all aspects of the federal government under the control of the president — is a recipe for authoritarianism and abuse of power.
The document calls for deploying the federal government to crack down on tech companies: “TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are specifically designed to create digital dependence, fuel mental illness and anxiety, and disrupt children’s connections with their parents and siblings. Federal Policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child abuse to continue.
And more: “Pornography should be outlawed. Those who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who provide pornography should be classified as registered sex offenders,” “Promote it Companies that spread it should be shut down Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart couldn’t define pornography, but said: “I know it when I see it. ” Again, I can’t define exactly what makes a proposal unconstitutional, but I know it when I see it.
The document praised freedom and reiterated some of the noble but failed ideas of the Reagan era, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. But it seems more concerned with blocking federal agencies that promote “wokeness” than improving education for everyone. There is little inspiration in it. Well, there’s no guessing what Trump’s next term will look like.
Times are changing, but promoting freedom by reducing government power—rather than harnessing government power on behalf of “conservatives” or populist nostrums—remains the right way to revitalize the country. I’m glad Reagan and Kemp aren’t here to see what happened to their legacies.
This column first appeared in the Orange County Register.
