Recent primary elections make it undeniable: President Trump dominates the Republican Party.
The president has gone 118-0 in winning endorsements over various recent contests, including challenging high-profile incumbents such as Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.). The stunning sweep has ushered out of office politicians who do not support Trump, and welcomed in those who do. As House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told a gaggle of reporters recently, Trump’s endorsement “is the most powerful in the history of politics.”
The last person to achieve that unquestioned Republican leadership was President Ronald Reagan.
What do the two men have in common? First, they speak common sense to the common man. Second, they get things done. Third, their bold agendas infused new life into a moribund Republican Party, each in their own time.
The comparison between Trump and Reagan, who is now hailed as the godfather of American conservatism, will draw plenty of skepticism. But the legacy of our 40th president tracks closely with that of our 45th. While Reagan is celebrated for facing down the Soviet Union, winning with his famous “peace through strength” doctrine, he also navigated the first arms-control agreement with the “Evil Empire,” which came under fire at the time from hardline conservatives who accused the president of “going soft” on communism.
We do not yet know the outcome of Trump’s war against Iran. But if he can negotiate a peace deal that removes the nuclear threat from the Middle East’s biggest sponsor of terror, and expands the Abraham Accords, he will have reset the region’s future. A similar opportunity exists in the White House’s aggressive posture toward Cuba, an island 90 miles off our coast that for 67 years has provided a dangerous access point for our enemies.
When Reagan was elected president in 1980, his landslide victory put Republicans in control of the Senate for the first time in 26 years. His visionary leadership resuscitated a party decimated by the Nixon era and the forgettable campaign of former President Gerald Ford. Trump has similarly energized the Republican Party, extending its reach into voting groups hitherto dominated by Democrats, such as Hispanics and young people. His agenda has tapped groups of people who felt left behind by our politics and never voted before.
Despite critics’ claim that the former real estate developer is not a true Reagan conservative, Trump’s priorities closely track that of the former actor. Reagan believed in limited government, a strong defense, religious freedom, individual liberty, universal opportunity and pride in our nation. Those are exactly the underpinnings of Trump’s presidency.
Just as Reagan struggled to bring the Republican Party on board with his ambitions, so has Trump. For Reagan, it was conservatives and old-guard Republicans who mocked his “voodoo” supply-side economics and his overtures to Russia.
Trump has similarly confronted opposition from those on the right who are angry about the war with Iran and critical of his trade and tariff policies.
Like Trump, Reagan unnerved many of his moderate Republican colleagues. George H.W. Bush ran against Reagan in the 1980 primaries, with his ambitious plans to cut taxes, deregulate industry and roll back bloated welfare programs.
During the early years of the Reagan presidency, Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), known as the “Great Conciliator,” and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), described by The New York Times as “heir to a centrist Republican tradition,” served as the party’s Senate leaders. Those establishment Republicans, both famous for their willingness to work across the aisle, remind us of senators like Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Thune (R-S.D.), who have never been comfortable with the disruptive Donald Trump.
Reagan likewise sometimes found Republicans in Congress working against him. Conservatives like Dole fought his push to lower income taxes, while others railed against a 5 cent gas tax increase he proposed to repair infrastructure. Reagan also faced intense criticism from hard-liners in the Senate over his nuclear arms control treaty concluded with Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, which some characterized as soft on communism.
Both Trump and Reagan campaigned on bringing down the fiscal deficit, and both promoted tax cuts that critics say made our deficits worse. Reagan’s tax cuts spurred a period of high growth. Although government outlays did not drop, spending did fall from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Overall, Reagan shrank the federal government by about 5 percent.
Trump similarly promised to bring down the deficit. His first-term tax cuts boosted real GDP growth to 3.35 percent in 2019 — the highest since 2004 — but then the pandemic shut down the economy. COVID-related spending, especially under President Joe Biden, exploded, ramping up our deficits and inflation, and making Trump’s economic legacy hard to measure. Still, his administration has shrunk the federal workforce to its smallest size since 1966 — a step toward the limited government embraced by both Reagan and Trump.
To be sure, Reagan and Trump are different men. Reagan was known as genial and humorous, but he also had a temper. On several occasions he angrily told hecklers, including one Republican candidate, to “shut up.” Those eruptions, in a gentler era, caused an uproar. Trump has certainly taken chastising his opponents to a new level. But he also employs humor and has charmed bankers and politicians alike over the years to further his ambitions.
Personalities aside, the two presidents offered the same promise to the American people, amended for their different eras: freedom and opportunity. Those are the elements that have made our nation the envy of the world for 250 years.
Historians at the Hoover Institute wrote contemporaneously, “Reagan will be remembered as the president who reversed the decades-old flow of power to Washington.” Trump can claim the same.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.
This article originally appeared on TheHill.com
