A Political and Ideological Scoreboard of the Right to Separate the Sheep from the Goats

As a conservative lecturer and symposium leader, no question is asked of me more by students and activists than: “How do the different ideological factions relate to one another”? They want a political spectrum scorecard to straighten things out.

There are many spectrum versions but most of them have no consistent metalogical attribute defining the criterion they are measuring. Many have been tried and none is perfect. The most logical spectrum to this old political science professor measures the degree to which each type relies upon state power to achieve their vision of a good society, from communism/national socialism on the extreme power left through pragmatic moderates in the center to zero-government anarchists on the extreme right. (READ MORE: David French: A Fallen Conserative’s Fairytale)

The Left opposes this alignment placing both communism and national socialism at the extreme ends of their spectrum, even though the extreme Right position likewise endures the burden of lawless anarchism. Both left-isms do grant unlimited power to the national state to institute their respective ideals and therefore should be on the left extreme. Moving toward the center, critical theory and Democratic socialism are more moderate versions of communism, and progressivism is more moderate socialism. New Deal-Welfare Democrats are more centrist still, with the pure center motivated only by “neutral” pragmatism. 

They can all be identified at the Democratic National Convention.

How Does the Right Fit Together Anyhow?

But my students are most concerned about the Right. Where does Donald Trump and his new populist MAGA movement fit in? Moving from the center, the right government power spectrum should begin with neoconservative never-Trumpers, then nationalist conservative populist pro-Trumpers, then religious traditionalists, then Reagan-fusionists balancing tradition and freedom, then pure freedom libertarians and, finally, no-government-at-all anarchists. 

This is not a perfect classification, but its logic does allow some rational means for students to compare different conservativisms. The surprise is ranking Trump rather centrist, contrary to both leftist and neoconservative beliefs. But clearly, the Trump movement is more pragmatic, less theoretical, and more like New Deal Democrats to the center-left — which is one reason the elite leading both surrounding factions oppose Trump so passionately. 

The center-right begins with the neoconservatives, which as its popular book titled The Right reminds, shifted from the center-left. As its founder, Irving Kristol, put it, this faction was “mugged by reality” and moved from left to right in the 1970s, especially on foreign policy under Norman Podhoretz. Neoconservatives came to power under George W. Bush with his 2001 pragmatic, centrist “compassionate conservatism,” supported by younger media intellectuals under his son William Kristol, who did present this as a more centrist position. 

Moving further right, nationalist conservatives reacted to neo-elite centrism with Trump populism, supported by nat-con intellectuals ranging from Yoram Hazony to West Coast Straussians. To its right, traditionalists have been a relevant right faction, called “the moral majority,” since strategists Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich created it in the late 70s. These originally supported Reagan-fusionism in 1980 but became a separate political faction beginning with Pat Robertson’s run for president in 1988.

Libertarianism began with intellectuals like Albert Jay Nock, who were alienated by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal expansion of government. Leonard E. Read created the first acknowledged libertarian educational institution under the principles of free markets, private property, limited government, and moral “consciousness.” Economist Murray Rothbard led libertarianism in a more anarchical-capitalist direction, with both factions supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964. Read-influenced libertarians more or less retained Goldwater-Reagan-Fusionist-oriented affiliations. But the Rothbard-purer-libertarian faction split from Republicans, with Reason magazine in 1970, the Libertarian Party in 1972, and the CATO Institute in 1977. 

The most successful faction on the right has been Reagan’s fusion of freedom and rule of law, of libertarianism and traditionalism, which Reagan himself identified as his own synthesis inspired by William F. Buckley Jr, Frank S. Meyer, and F.A. Hayek, among others, in the 1960s. None questioned Reagan’s Fusionist influence intellectually or politically until recently. In fact, it dominated economically and perhaps morally at least until the Great Recession in 2007. (RELATED: ‘Nationalism’ Over ‘Conservatism’)

Did Fusionism Survive?

Interestingly, this most politically successful faction of the right is the most questioned today. Nat-cons like to call fusionism, “Zombie Reaganism,” and claim it is now irrelevant. Traditionalists consider fusionism too secular, and libertarians see it as too religious. Even with Reagan’s continuing popularity, each opposing faction claims that its own single principle cannot be synthesized but must stand alone as the true right. 

To the neo-con book world, fusionism is only identified today with one adherent who later rejected it and with another who created a totally unrelated “neo-fusionism.” Reagan is specifically treated “as just one character among many.” Fusionism supposedly only lasted through the Buckley/Meyer and Reagan anticommunism period but expired after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was then displaced politically by the aggressive neoconservatism of George W. Bush, which was in turn overcome by war, economic “calamity” and the rise of Trump. (WATCH: The Spectacle Ep. 135: Let’s Face It, Conservatism is Changing)

But Reagan fusionism did survive Bush II — even according to the Right book — but was then labeled as “grassroots” and “populist” (well before Trump), now these “populists” are referred to as the “New Right,” the Tea Party, as the old American Conservative Union, and so forth. Rush Limbaugh and Hayek are mentioned but not identified with continuing Reaganism or fusionism. 

Some have even proposed that all right factions simply move to the fully pragmatic center, suggesting that each faction rejects the very idea of a general conservatism, or even of holding any separate identity, as a practical means to better influence Trump politically. While this may be rational from a pragmatist perspective, it will not satisfy traditionalists, libertarians, or others who demand moral imperatives rather than becoming special interest petitioners. 

But what makes Reagan’s fusionism different is that it expects that a spectrum of different perspectives will always exist. The job of a dynamic if not arithmetic midpoint — the job of fusionism — is synthesizing traditionalist moral and legal imperatives with the most politically feasible libertarian institutional means, hopefully to ameliorate the reasonable claims of all right-of-center positions. Fusionism’s practicality is that Gallup shows even today that most self-identified conservatives are both moral traditionists and economic libertarians.

The essence of fusionism is the ideal of The Enduring Tension, the practical synthesis between libertarian freedom and traditional moral order that not only inspired the American authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution but also was the engine that drove all Western Civilization to its fragile balance between legal order and individual freedom. 

In any event, this spectrum is a way to explain how the factions fit together, and most students seem to think that it helps separate the sheep from the goats.

Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of 11 books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, and Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles, and is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator.

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