In response, National Review Online asked a group of members and leaders of that coalition to — without getting too much into any specific Republican running for president right now — address the question: “Is the Reagan coalition dead?” And: Can conservatives survive this primary season as winners?
Terence P. Jeffrey
The Reagan coalition is not dead, but suffering from a wasting disease. If it does not get the right therapy soon, it will be too feeble in some not-too-distant election to elect a Republican president.
The principal causes of the disease are the welfare state, illegal immigration and the decline of the family.
The Reagan coalition, properly understood, is not some menagerie of conservative leaders, think tanks, publications or interest groups. It is the voters who have elected Republican presidents — not from Reagan on, but Nixon on.
Every president since 1968 has been elected by the same swing voters. They are left of Republicans economically; right of the Democrats culturally. When the GOP unites these voters to the conservative base, the GOP wins. When Democrats unite these voters to the liberal base, Democrats win.
So far, Democrats have defeated the Reagan coalition only with southern governors: Jimmy Carter, in the wake of Watergate, running against a culturally moderate Republican; and Bill Clinton, in the wake of a recession, running against a Republican who thought it distasteful to highlight Clinton’s cultural radicalism.
The quintessential Reagan-coalition swing voter is a church-going married mom in Ohio, whose husband works with his hands for a living. Democrats are fighting for an America with fewer of these, using the welfare state, illegal immigration, and abortion as weapons. Some Republicans have grabbed the same weapons … because, after all, they are compassionate souls who believe euthanasia is the only thing to do under the circumstances.
— Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of CNSNews.
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