Getting New Right To The Point
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As the 2020 Election draws ever closer, the American Right has found itself at a crossroads. While Republicans currently control both the Executive Branch and the Senate, polls are consistently putting Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden and his Vice-President pick Kamala Harris on track to defeat Donald Trump and Mike Pence in November. Some prominent Republicans have even turned against the sitting President, backing the anti-Trump Lincoln Project or even speaking at the 2020 Democratic Convention.
Young, progressive Democratic politicians are gaining ground on their older, more moderate colleagues. This, in turn, is pushing the Democratic Party further to the left. Ilan Omar, a member of Alexandria Occasio-Cortez’s “Squad”, recently defeated a more well funded primary challenger for her seat in Congress, speaking to the popularity of more left-wing politics among Democratic voters. As Democrats shift further to the left, a new direction is asserting itself among Republicans and the American Right.
The New Right has its origins in the 70s and 80s. In the wake of the Vietnam War, some conservatives began to see the domination of a “liberal establishment” in America as the cause of most, if not all, of the United States’ political and social problems. New Right politics helped to secure Ronald Reagan’s place as the 40th President of the U.S.A., and more recently helped to bring Trump into the White House to shake up the liberal establishment: the New Right’s original target.
Then and now, the New Right found its base in Christian religious groups, conservative business leaders and right-wing activists. Their philosophy is a focus on social conservative values, encouraging economic growth and putting “America First”. In today's world they see that the greatest threat to democracy is in fact the “woke culture” that they believe the Left has pushed on society. The New Right sees the ambivalence of libertarians and establishment conservatives as the reason for ineffective attempts to stop these trends.
The lessons of the Vietnam War, and the military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, have left their mark on the politics of the New Right. They have positioned themselves as anti-intervention, believing that engaging in foreign wars is an unnecessary drain on the country’s resources and the politics of foreign nations are of less concern than the greatness of America. While the Left decries American intervention for its impact abroad, the New Right decries it for its impact at home.
They also place a large emphasis on traditional family values. Pointing towards increasing rates of divorce and abortion as a result of feminism and liberalism run rampant. Trends that can only be curbed by a return to the traditional family unit. New Right politicians and activists are fervent opponents of abortion and consistently launch challenges to the Constitutional right to an abortion first set out in Roe vs. Wade.
In terms of economic policy, the New Right insists that environmental and labor regulations are undermining the competitiveness of American firms in the global market. With this in mind, they seek to dismantle those regulations to allow American business to flourish. They also take a dim view of free trade, seeing it as a way to outsource American jobs abroad and further undercut the success of American businesses.
Trump, to a certain extent, represents the worldview of the New Right. He is pro-life, cutting funding for abortion clinics in disadvantaged countries and attacking Planned Parenthood at home. He has also sought to remove protections for members of the LGBT community, which along with his pro-life stance guarentees him the support of Christian Evangelicals. His administration has spent the last four years dismantling environmental regulations on businesses. As of July his administration has rolled back 68 environmental regulations with 32 more in progress. Despite his combative rhetoric, he has also pulled American troops out of Syria, a move criticized for its execution but in keeping with the anti-interventionism of the New Right.
There is a reason some right leaning moderates in the Republican Party have decided to cross the partisan divide and cast their vote for Biden in the upcoming election. Like them, Biden is a moderate even if he is on the other side. The politics of the New Right are too extreme for them, just as many Democrats see AOC and her Squad as being “too left-wing”. A major point of contention between the New Right and right leaning moderates is the issue of foreign policy. While the New Right is anti-interventionist, moderates still see America as a world superpower with a duty to police the globe in the name of freedom and democracy.
One of the biggest problems facing the New Right is their association with extremist right-wing activity. In the 70s and 80s New Right politics were supported by the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, while today activists such as Laura Loomer are entering politics under their banner. Loomer, a self-described 'proud Islamophobe' and controversial figure, recently became the Republican nominee in Florida's 21st District and was congratulated by Trump himself.
Despite these ties, the New Right is attractive to the rural, working class voters that tend to lean Republican. While moderates within the party give the impression that their main concerns are foreign wars and big business, the New Right speaks to the concern many feel with the way society is changing at home. The issues that these voters want to see addressed are the kinds of things the “liberal establishment” wants to ignore, in their opinion, and moderate Republicans are in bed with the establishment. The New Right promises a return to the Reagan-era of American politics, which many Republican voters are craving.
As the New Left is doing for Democrats, the New Right will continue to push Republicans, and their sector of American politics, further to the right. The future of the Republican Party may be one in which less emphasis is placed on supporting big businesses beyond limiting regulations on them, and more emphasis is placed on returning America to more traditional conservative values with the family unit at its centre. In any case, between the New Left denouncing American imperialism and the New Right emphasizing the importance of focusing on America first, the future of American politics looks to be a hostile environment for war hawks from either party.