By Francesca Pinney
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election warrants a re-evaluation of where the conservative movement stands, according to Stanford University scholars and students, with the goal of determining whether the Republican Party is still synonymous with traditional conservative values.
William F. Buckley’s National Review magazine, established in 1955, defined the modern conservative movement and then-U.S. Sen.Goldwater (R-Ariz.) began defining its contours in the 1960s.
Professor Pedro Regalado, an assistant professor of history, said the “real revolution” came two decades later under President Ronald Reagan, who cemented the supply-side economic principles of tax cuts and deregulation as paramount domestic policy goals. Anti-abortion policies and reduced government spending also defined Reagan’s presidency.
According to Hoover Institution Fellow Peter Berkowitz, a former director of policy planning in the Trump administration, the conservative movement emerged in response to the liberal domestic policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and as a bulwark against the spread of Soviet communism. The movement, Berkowitz said, was characterized by its early proponents as a fight against collectivism at home and abroad.
“Elements of Trump’s sensibility fit very well with the movement that Buckley effectively founded and which enjoyed culmination in Reagan,” Berkowitz said.
But in the view of Aradshar Chaddar ’27, president of Stanford Democrats, a student organization, the movement has been shaped more recently by populist politics that have given some politicians, including Trump, a near cult-like following.
“Trump was able to get to this point because he had this whole media machinery owing to Roger Ailes, the founding father of Fox News,” Chaddar said.
The question of whether today’s Republican Party is still the primary vehicle for the conservative movement is a contentious one. Scholars are considering whether Trumpism represents a shift away from conservative principles or whether it has managed to bring together different strands of conservatism under the Make America Great Again (MAGA) umbrella.
Berkowitz points to some Trump policies scripted from the traditional the Republican playbook, including his 2017 executive orders to reduce federal regulation of the economy and cut taxes.
But Regalado believes that we are witnessing a fracturing of the right unseen in past election cycles.
He sees the Cheney family as a prime example–a Republican Party dynasty that has broken with the Trump and characterized him as a threat to democracy.
Regalado said Trump has departed from conservative stances on foreign policy, not only on the question of tariffs, which he favors, but also regarding his comfort with authoritarian leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“Many Republicans believe the enemies are China and Russia and Trump has called [Chinese President] Xi Xinping brilliant, which is very antithetical to conservative principles,” Regalado said.
He said Trump’s behavior is contradictory to how Reagan would have conducted himself. Regarding Trump’s staunch anti-immigration stance, Regalado notes that while Reagan often spoke about restoring America’s greatness, he gave amnesty to undocumented immigrants in 1986.
Chaddar believes shifts in conservative views toward immigration issues can be attributed to increasing globalization and a rise in global conflict in the past five years. With increased immigration due to civil conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, for example, the issue has sparked an identity conflict.
“Countries cannot remain homogenous anymore and that scares strongholds that have always preserved their strength by maintaining their influence. This has influenced Trump to say ‘put America first,’” Chaddar said.
The original split within the conservative movement concerned the divide between traditionalists and libertarians, and the movement seems now to be re-litigating an old dispute between the two, according to Berkowitz.
Berkowitz points to Buckley’s National Review, in which Buckley asserted that traditionalists and libertarians need one another because each supplies something that the other lacks–limited government conservatives are focused on keeping government in check, while traditionalists focus on enforcing social mores.
While Reagan and Buckley brought the two schools together, Berkowitz said, the two streams have not been united since the presidency of George W. Bush.
“A traditionalist would not say that Trump epitomizes a statesman, but they might say, look, we live in a world where schools teach that there are a multiplicity of sexes, that gender rules are inherently fluid, public schools are disposed not to tell parents when they declare that their child wants to change sexes,” Berkowitz said. “A traditionalist might say we’d prefer Trump, with all of his obvious flaws, to a progressive ideology run wild.”
Stanford College Republicans President Elsa Johnson ‘27 likewise recognizes a shift in the right’s rhetoric.
“A lot of people during the 2016 election would never ever admit they were voting for Trump, and now, a lot more people feel empowered to speak out about their views,” Johnson said.
While it is difficult to make predictions, Berkowitz believes a lot will depend on Trump’s Cabinet appointments.
Berkowitz believes the second Trump administration could be “Reaganite” in regards to a “conservative internationalist” engagement in global affairs, although Trump supporters would like his second administration to focus less on foreign policy.
