Reagan's daughter and a 1988 speech strongly suggest Trump's GOP is no longer the party of Reagan

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Reagan Presidential Library)

last updated 4 June 2018

People ask Patti Davis what her father, former President Ronald Reagan, "would say if he were here now," she wrote in an op-ed The Washington Post published Sunday night. "He'd be pretty horrified at where we've come to." While Davis did not mention President Trump by name, she suggested Reagan "would be appalled and heartbroken at a Congress that refuses to stand up to a president who not only seems ignorant of the Constitution but who also attempts at every turn to dismantle and mock our system of checks and balances."

Reagan, a GOP icon, recognized the "difference between immigration laws and cruelty," Davis said. "He believed in laws; he hated cruelty." She didn't mention trade, but Reagan's Nov. 26, 1988, radio address sounds eerily like a posthumous response to Trump's policies, most recently his unilateral tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Reagan lamented that "the trade deficit has led some misguided politicians to call for protectionism." In free trade, "there are no losers, only winners," he said, continuing:

Today protectionism is being used by some American politicians as a cheap form of nationalism. ... We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag. The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion, it is an American triumph. [Ronald Regan, 1988]

Political parties evolve, and Trump publicly disagreed with Reagan about trade and foreign policy in the 1980s, too. Reagan likely had incoming House Speaker Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) in mind with his 1988 rebuke, but as today's GOP Congress is doing nothing to stop Trump's self-declared "Trade War," it's hard to see much Reagan in today's Republicans. Maybe the Reagan GOP is "taking a nap somewhere," as former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggested last week. Or perhaps, as Peter Wehner argued, it is dead.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.