The conservative movement at the time was disillusioned, and fearful that they’d need “time in the wilderness” in order to rethink and reform itself. Reagan was viewed as a mixed success at best — really! [bold mine-DL] The book’s third chapter is titled “The Failure of the Reagan Gambit,” and it details all the ways in which Reagan, the supposed small-government hero, disappointed conservatives by failing to reduce the size of federal government. Frum’s criticisms of Reagan aren’t quite as harsh as current complaints about Bush II, but they’re eerily similar. ~Peter Suderman

Peter’s own description of Reagan as the “supposed small-government hero” is telling, because it shows the degree to which we have reconciled ourselves to the reality that Reagan the Goldwaterite got lost along the way or perhaps was never as intent on shrinking the size of the federal government as many of his supporters hoped.  Reagan was a mixed success, which was a lot better than some of the failures and complete wrecks that have followed since, but I think this is even more readily apparent to us today than it was in the ’90s when the Reagan mythology was already being constructed.  The power of that mythology and the Reagan nostalgia that has gripped the GOP and conservatives since his passing have served to discourage reflection and self-criticism, as if all we needed to do was to get right with Reagan and then all would be well.  To a large extent, that ignored the extent to which Reagan the President had not been right with the Reagan the Myth.  

As with Bush, one of the main things conservatives could look back on with satisfaction was the reduction in income taxes, which was obviously much more dramatic and significant under Reagan.  In foreign affairs, it was truly a mixed bag, and this would be true regardless of which side of the debate you were on: nuclear arms reductions went along with needless deployments, questionable backing of guerrilla forces in various flashpoints around the globe and rather dodgy arms deals took place alongside some important public diplomacy and covert support for dissidents.  On immigration, Reagan signed off on a disastrous amnesty that Bush was not able to repeat; in this one respect, Reagan was demonstrably worse than Bush.  That being said, Reagan left office as a popular President presiding over generally good economic times who quickly became a widely-respected former President, and most of the conservative discontent in the early ’90s was focused on his rather squishier successor in the midst of an economic downturn.  Things are clearly much worse for the GOP and conservatives today than they were in 1992.  Management, competence, responsibility–all of these words that might have once been associated with the GOP no longer are, and Republicans find themselves largely discredited in the eyes of the majority in both foreign affairs and economic policy. 

It is fair to say that Republicans–and conservatives–have not faced a situation like this one since the eve of the 1964 landslide loss.  While the result will not be that lopsided, this will probably be the second-worst defeat of a Republican presidential ticket since WWII, and it will be the first time in over a century that Republicans are not going to win an open presidential election.  Unlike Goldwater 1964, however, McCain has no coherent message and leaves no legacy to be seized on later.  There are times when parties lose elections badly but find a coherent set of arguments that can make them competitive soon thereafter, and then there is the case of the Tories after 1997 as they stumbled and bumbled from one leader to the next as obsessed with Europe as McCain and the rest of the GOP leadership have been obsessed with earmarks.  The GOP’s alienation of the rising cohort of 18-29 year olds, which it was always going to have difficulty with because of demographic and cultural changes within that cohort, is going to reverberate for decades to come, even though it is the youngest voters who have the greatest incentives to respond to a new agenda of entitlement reform and fiscal responsibility.  The GOP is going to find itself increasingly saddled with ageing Boomer voters who will reject the kind of policy innovation that is needed to offer a coherent alternative.