This certainly wasn’t the plan, but by placing their second candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Republican officials are shining a spotlight on how far their party has come from positions that made the 40th president a conservative icon.

The Republican Party has retained the social conservatism that made Reagan the candidate of choice for evangelical Christians, a constituency that now dominates many Republican primaries.

That is it

was clear throughout the campaign

what a clear Wednesday evening

The candidates have debated how far to go in imposing a national ban on abortion, a goal sought by many Republican primary voters but opposed by a majority of Americans.

On a number of other issues, such as foreign policy, Social Security and Medicare, trade and immigration, Donald Trump’s party has diverged sharply from Reagan’s.

The most powerful change goes beyond politics and concerns the party’s underlying view of America’s future.

Reagan’s “undying faith that in this nation under God the future will be ours” has little in common with Trump’s grim warnings about a “nation in decline.”

But the shift reflects a change in the national mood, especially among white voters who make up the vast majority of the Republican Party. Among white Americans, the share who view the country’s future with optimism has fallen dramatically in recent decades, from about 3 in 4 in 2000 to just 4 in 10 currently, according to NORC’s General Social Survey.

or official name

at the University of Chicago.

In the current field of major candidates, the seven who will take the stage Wednesday night, and Trump, the consistent frontrunner in the polls who has so far declined to participate in the 2024 debates, the clearest divide is between those who favor this shift embrace, away from Reagan’s vision, and those who oppose it. .

Former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, former Governor of New Jersey. Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence have most clearly adhered to the pre-Trump, Reaganite consensus on major policy issues.

Businessman

Vivek Ramaswamy and the Governor of Florida. Ron DeSantis has both tried to position themselves as younger versions of Trump. South Carolina

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Sen. Tim Scott has largely avoided drawing sharp contrasts with his rivals and the No. 7 nominee

on the stage

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum remains largely unknown to most voters.

“A lot of this is less about ideology than it is about temperament and approach,” said Republican strategist Kevin Spillane, a strong Trump critic.

in an interview before the debate

. “Trump’s campaign is not about politics. It’s about Trump and the tone, the temperament, the message and the atmosphere. The effect, however, is to “undermine” the pillars of traditional conservative politics, he added.

Not that anyone publicly acknowledges a change. Reagan remains a hero to many Republican voters, with four in 10 Republicans naming him in Pew Research Center polls this summer as the best president of the past four decades, slightly trailing the share that chose Trump.

And thus the candidates

praise praised

Reagan, as well as some of them

buried buried

his legacy.

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The clearest policy break with Reaganism concerns the war in Ukraine.

“The concept underlying the Reagan Doctrine was to help those who are willing to fight for their own freedom,” said David Trulio, president of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the private group that shares ground with the public Library.

“That is a concept that is very directly applicable in the context of Ukraine, where Russia was an aggressor and Ukrainians are willing to fight for their own freedom,” Trulio said in an interview before the debate. “There has definitely been division

and those who disagree

,

I think this is a very critical issue that we all need to listen to.”

Those who disagree, as Trulio put it, include a majority of Republican voters. In a CNN poll this summer, 71% of Republicans said they opposed more money to help Ukraine, and 59% said the US had done enough to help the Ukrainians.

Prominent far-right Republicans, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have vowed to block more U.S. money for Kiev, even as traditional party figures, such as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have pushed for more money. Those divisions have played a major role in blocking Republicans in the House of Representatives from passing legislation to fund government agencies, likely leading to a shutdown starting this weekend.

Trump’s peculiar admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin has helped shift Republican opinion toward Russia. But more broadly, his disdain for NATO and other U.S. alliances and his opposition to U.S. foreign involvement have revived isolationism, which was a major force in Republican politics before World War II and the Cold War. His slogan “America First” echoes a leading isolationist slogan of the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Last month during the first GOP debate, Ukraine was involved in some of the most heated divisions, with Ramaswamy claiming that US aid to Kiev was “driving Russia further into the hands of China,” and Haley turning on him, saying, “You have no experience in foreign policy. , and it shows.

Insert tonight’s quotes from Ukraine here?

The GOP traditionalists also differ from Trump on government spending, which is perhaps most important when it comes to the two massive retiree programs, Social Security and Medicare, which together account for about a third of what Washington spends.

Before Trump, the Republican Party consistently called for efforts to contain the costs of these programs, called “entitlements” in budget language. In his 2016 campaign, Trump promised not to touch either program. In the current campaign, he has attacked several of his rivals, most notably DeSantis, for past votes in Congress in favor of limits on entitlement spending.

Haley has openly adhered to the pre-Trump view of rights.

We must slow down the biggest drivers of our national debt. Democrats and Republicans don’t want to admit it, but Americans deserve the hard truth. Entitlement spending is unsustainable. We need reforms, she said last week in what her campaign billed as a major speech on economic policy in New Hampshire. She called, among other things, for raising the retirement age for future retirees.

rights quotes

Her deft advocacy of such positions has helped Haley consolidate support among the party’s traditionalist wing. But while the debate may be lively on stage, there isn’t much doubt about which side is the winner in the battle between Reaganism and Trumpism.

The Reaganite trio of Haley, Christie and Pence collectively enjoy the support of about 1 in 7 Republican voters nationwide, according to the average of polls tracked by the FiveThirtyEight website. Only Trump consistently has the support of more than half.