Category Archives: Ronald Reagan

The Hill’s Jonathan Swan reports that during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Donald Trump’s economic advisor Stephen Moore told House Republican lawmakers that “they now belong to a fundamentally different political party.” To the surprise of some in the room, Moore explained that the conservative party of Ronald Reagan has now become Trump’s new “populist working-class party.”

“Just as Reagan converted the GOP into a conservative party, Trump has converted the GOP into a populist working-class party,” Moore said in an interview Wednesday. “In some ways this will be good for conservatives and in other ways possibly frustrating.”

Moore has spent much of his career advocating for huge tax and spending cuts and free trade. He’s been as close to a purist ideological conservative as they come, but he says the experience of traveling around Rust Belt states to support Trump has altered his politics.

“It turned me more into a populist,” he said, expressing frustration with the way some in the Beltway media dismissed the economic concerns of voters in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

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In a Monday interview, acclaimed Reagan biographer Craig Shirley described GOP frontrunner Donald Trump as “a breath of fresh air” and explained that in Trump’s candidacy “We might be witnessing a new form of American conservatism emerging.”

Shirley, who heads the deeply-influential conservative public relations firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, explained that Trump’s honest campaign contrasts starkly with that of donor-class favorite Sen. Marco Rubio. Shirley argued that Rubio’s position on immigration—a position, which conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly described as “anti-American” and “dangerous”— may prove to be “a campaign ender” for the young Florida Senator.

Part of Trump’s appeal, Shirley explained, is that Trump, as a successful businessman, knows how the political game works—i.e. he knows how donors are essentially able to buy politicians and get them to them to champion their special interests. Shirley likened Trump’s sincere and populist campaign to Paul’s conversion in the Bible. “He’s on a road to Damascus,” Shirley said of Trump’s campaign to crush the donor-class influence in Washington. “He’s gone through a reformation just like Paul did. There’s something quite refreshing to the American voters, especially Republican primary voters, to somebody who’s willing to confess their sins and ask for forgiveness, and then become… a crusader for reform. I think that’s part of his appeal.”

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