Published November 21, 2024
The Republican Party sweep in the election was based on an entirely new political coalition. Once the preserve of the nation’s upper class, the GOP is now a collection of a multiethnic working class and the still-large remainder of the old, Bush/Romney-era party.
This conservative-populist coalition cannot hold together if the party simply returns to its old agenda. That’s especially true in domestic policy and economics. There’s a reason the new working-class converts formerly backed Barack Obama and in many cases Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden as well.
But giving the converts carte blanche over the party’s legislative agenda won’t fly either. Their votes helped tipped the election to Republicans, but they were added to those of a loyal conservative base that has endured many defeats before arriving at what could be the promised land.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
