win one

like it

the Gipper? Good luck with that.

This week, the Republican field for president took almost final shape, and it became clear that among Donald Trump’s suddenly growing number of rivals, some are modeling themselves to varying degrees on that other former president, Ronald Reagan. That strategy is a way of breaking, if only implicitly, with Trump and Trumpism: going back to the future by appealing to the most

impactful and

loved by modern

Republican

presidents

among Republicans.

Of all the announced candidates, none is more open about embracing Reagan than Trump than Trump’s once submissive vice president, Mike Pence. At 64, Pence is one of the older Trump challengers in the bunch, old enough for Reagan to have been a formative influence for him in real time, as Pence recounted in his Iowa presidential announcement on Wednesday.

He started out in politics as a Democrat, Pence told his assembled supporters. But I have to tell you that as soon as I heard the voice of the 40th President of the United States, I joined the Reagan Revolution and never looked back.

He pressed those last words for emphasis. But even in his friendly audience, the applause was only polite.

That is a telling response. It suggests the very real limits of doing the Reagan mantle, be it Pence, former governor of Arkansas. Asa Hutchinson, former governor of South Carolina and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, or this week’s other two newcomers

Unpleasant

the match, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and second-term North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Reagan, the self-proclaimed optimist who expanded the appeal of the Republican Party even as he turned it to the right in the 1980s, is an increasingly faded memory for voters; he left office nearly 35 years ago and soon disappeared from public view, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He died two decades ago.

Invocations of his name and legacy may have once animated Republicans, but now the Gipper can’t win over anyone.

The current Republican Party is the Trump Party. Even many of his constituents who aren’t quite MAGAfied still want Trump in 2024 or when they’re tired of his maniacal dramas and legal quagmire, someone like him, just without so much baggage.

So far, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has dominated that job. Yes, as governor he once proclaimed February 6th the 40th

e

birthday of the president, as Ronald Reagan Day in Florida. But as a presidential candidate, DeSantis tries to outsmart Trump in the right-wing culture wars, with anti-immigration stunts and populist attacks on iconic companies, seemingly without regard for how that performance would hurt him before the general election. he wins the Republican nomination.

Hutchinson once joked to Washington journalists at their Gridiron Club’s annual dinner that if DeSantis challenged Trump, it would be the first time a father and son have ever faced each other for the presidency. Mini-Me DeSantis shares Trump’s superpowered brazenness and a zeal to strike back and knock down, though he’s only recently begun to do so against the former president.

The power of Trumpism is evident in the party: Together, Trump and DeSantis have the support of three-quarters of Republican voters, though DeSantis has slipped behind the former president by about 30 percentage points on average in the polls. Yet he remains Trump’s only rival whose party support is in double digits.

Republican voters, those who participate in primaries and primaries, are not looking for a return to Reagan’s trademark sunny optimism and talk about America as the shining city on the hill. Even before Trump (think Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party movement), these voters were looking for voters whose rhetoric leaned more towards American carnage and who validated voters’ grievances against the elites. Trump just kicked boxing up a notch

,

Okay, lots of notches

,

and they were hooked.

Differences between Reaganism and Trumpism are not just differences in style and rhetoric. They are substantive, which also works against those who would be Reagan

right

edux.

There is overlap between the -isms, mainly in terms of tax cuts and deregulation. But Reagan’s defining policies also included some that are now all but anathema to the Trump Party: He was pro-immigration; the groundbreaking 1986 law he signed included amnesty for millions of undocumented immigrants. He was for free trade, not protectionism. He was anti-communist and condemned the then Soviet Union as an evil empire pence other Haley have suggested, Reagan would certainly have opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and supported US aid to the defenders.

On Wednesday, reflecting his Reagan leanings, Pence also criticized Trump and DeSantis for being willing to relinquish US leadership on the world stage and coddle dictators like Vladimir Putin. Still, he should know that muscular internationalism is becoming increasingly unpopular among his potential voters. They rally behind Trump’s isolationist America First banner. The tension within the parties is evident in Congress, where Republicans are divided over further aid to Ukraine.

When presidential candidates are trailing by digits in the polls, there’s no harm in wrapping yourself in the mantle of a party icon. But it won’t help them either. Reaganism is a thing of the past. The Republican Party is showing no signs of a comeback and certainly not in time for the 2024 primary.

@jackiekcalmes