False Choices for the Right: Republican Priorities

, writing in the New York Times, posits a war for the post-Trump future of the Republican Party between two groups: the “” and the old “Reaganite” right. As he describes the two camps, I have some sympathies for each side. But I don’t think that they actually exist as he describes them.

The Reaganites favor “unfettered markets,” don’t care about federal deficits, think the economy needs more “exploitable workers flooding the low end of the labor market,” and want U.S. allies to “minimize their own military spending and rely on American might.” They also oppose any regulation of vice. “Reaganites tend to want gambling legalized and drug laws relaxed, they would rather tolerate the proliferation of abusive obscenity online than do anything about it, and they actively promote speculative financial markets and cryptocurrencies. They have resisted efforts to protect children by constraining the addictive design features of social media and other apps.”

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Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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, writing in the New York Times, posits a war for the post-Trump future of the Republican Party between two groups: the “” and the old “Reaganite” right. As he describes the two camps, I have some sympathies for each side. But I don’t think that they actually exist as he describes them.

The Reaganites favor “unfettered markets,” don’t care about federal deficits, think the economy needs more “exploitable workers flooding the low end of the labor market,” and want U.S. allies to “minimize their own military spending and rely on American might.” They also oppose any regulation of vice. “Reaganites tend to want gambling legalized and drug laws relaxed, they would rather tolerate the proliferation of abusive obscenity online than do anything about it, and they actively promote speculative financial markets and cryptocurrencies. They have resisted efforts to protect children by constraining the addictive design features of social media and other apps.”