New Right Adrift

It has been pretty well noticed that Ronald Reagan is successfully anaesthetizing the Democrats as the 1984 campaign approaches. How can they oppose him on Central America? Can they campaign for more taxes and less defense? Less well noticed is that Mr. Reagan has done the same to the New Right, those conservative revolutionaries who have criticized him for everything from softness on arms control to failing to defund the Left.

But what complaint do these conservatives have now that Mr. Reagan has tacked so sharply to the right? The President won a big vote on the MX in the House and Senate, with no appreciable loss to his arms-control negotiating position. He fired Tom Enders (anathema to the New Right) as top man at the State Department for Latin American Affairs and reassigned the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Deane Hinton—both actions clearly demonstrating the ascendancy of hardliners Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Clark, and Bill Middendorf (U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States) as the key formulators of Central American policy. Kenneth Adelman, the darling of the New Right, was propelled through the Senate in an AWACS-like drive by the President himself.

JM

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John McLaughlin

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It has been pretty well noticed that Ronald Reagan is successfully anaesthetizing the Democrats as the 1984 campaign approaches. How can they oppose him on Central America? Can they campaign for more taxes and less defense? Less well noticed is that Mr. Reagan has done the same to the New Right, those conservative revolutionaries who have criticized him for everything from softness on arms control to failing to defund the Left.

But what complaint do these conservatives have now that Mr. Reagan has tacked so sharply to the right? The President won a big vote on the MX in the House and Senate, with no appreciable loss to his arms-control negotiating position. He fired Tom Enders (anathema to the New Right) as top man at the State Department for Latin American Affairs and reassigned the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Deane Hinton—both actions clearly demonstrating the ascendancy of hardliners Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Clark, and Bill Middendorf (U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States) as the key formulators of Central American policy. Kenneth Adelman, the darling of the New Right, was propelled through the Senate in an AWACS-like drive by the President himself.