In 2015, when Trump descended his golden escalator, the GOP had recently taken control of many state governorships and legislatures. Despite the apparent GOP domination nationally, nothing substantial was changing. Many conservatives believed the Republican coalition was a movement-conservative one but that GOP politicians were betraying their voters once in office. But that analysis rested on faulty premises.

This is clear when you look at the consistent pre-2016 patterns in GOP presidential primary voting. In my 2016 book, The Four Faces of the Republican Party, I showed that movement economic conservatism was the weakest of the four identifiable factions. This group composed 10% of the nationwide primary electorate at most. Movement-conservative voters consistently preferred candidates who stressed religious and social issues but still were only about one-fifth of all voters.

Candidates such as Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney always prevailed because they had the support of the party’s largest faction: the somewhat conservatives. Republicans who told pollsters they were “somewhat conservative” made up 35%-40% of the national electorate. They supported many conservative goals but seemed to value stability and experience more than ideology.

Somewhat-conservative candidates always had the tacit backing of the party’s final silent partner, the moderates. While few elected Republicans were genuinely moderate, about 25%-30% of the GOP’s voters were. These people also composed larger shares of the electorate in delegate-rich states in the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and the Pacific Coast. They could thus swing behind the somewhat conservative choice and deliver him the nomination.

Trump’s GOP victory upset this apple cart in two ways. His full-throated endorsement of trade and immigration restrictions, coupled with a “no cuts” approach to entitlements and a rejection of hawkish, nation-building foreign policy, attracted millions of former Democrats into both the party and, more crucially, the primary electorate. These voters, most of them whites without a college degree, flocked to the only candidate who expressed views they had long held. GOP primary turnout soared. Over 30 million people voted in the 2016 Republican primaries and caucuses, way up from the 19 million-21 million who had voted in the 2000, 2008, and 2012 open contests.

Trump also drove away many of the moderates who had once voted in GOP primaries. The New Hampshire primary had always been the moderate high water mark, as about 48% of the state’s Republican primary voters were moderates or liberals. That share shrank to a mere 29% in 2016. Moderates also made up a smaller share than they had in the past in key states such as South Carolina (18% versus 31%-39%), Michigan (25% versus 35%-40%), and Texas (19% versus 25%-30%).

The old establishment wing thus lost a key part of its voter coalition at the same time that new voters who opposed establishment priorities flocked to the GOP. These two patterns carried over to the general election as well. Trump smashed the Democrats’ old “Blue Wall” in the Midwest, carrying Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the back of massive swings to the right from non-college-educated whites. He lost a similar number of votes nationwide from highly educated, moderate suburbanites, but those voters were frequently found in safely blue or red states. The result was a complete redrawing of the political map.

Dramatic changes such as this matter. Republicans hemorrhaged support among high-income moderates, who favored low taxes, stability, and cultural moderation. At the same time, it surged in popularity among low-income, “somewhat conservatives” who prioritized cultural conservatism and government action to help blue-collar voters.

These changes have grown in intensity thanks to Trump’s continued advances with nonwhite voters. Trump lost Asian and Hispanic voters by 38 points in 2016. His 2024 gap among Asians dropped to 15 points. For Hispanics, it was a mere 5 points. These new nonwhite GOP voters were not voting for Trump because they had suddenly decided that old-line Republicanism had been correct all along. They changed their votes because Trump promised a new blend of policies that, like in 2016, straddled the old partisan lines.

Trump also made inroads among voters who aren’t necessarily Christian conservatives, including abortion-rights supporters and people who don’t attend religious services. In 2016, Trump lost among people who never attend religious services, nearly one-third of the electorate, by 31 points. In 2024, he lost that group by only 24 points. Had he done as poorly among these voters as he did eight years prior, he would have lost the popular vote and quite possibly the election.

Taken together, this decadelong set of changes has transformed the Republican Party’s primary- and general-election constituencies. It is simply more economically downscale and less traditionally religious than it was in the early 2010s. The upside is that the party now has a chance to win presidential elections with majority support, dominate the Senate and most state governments, and possibly control the House. The downside, if it is a downside, is that this new coalition needs a new set of policies and a new self-understanding if it is to survive and thrive.

Some conservatives recognize this is the present situation but believe that a return to the old order is desirable and possible. Former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, regularly calls for a return to the limited-government, free-trade, and democracy-building foreign policy focus of prior generations. However laudable those sentiments are in theory, the political evidence shows that those who advocate this route are doomed to fail.

The internal Republican dynamics are, if anything, even less favorable to these views than they were in 2016. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley ran on a platform resembling the old conservative order in the 2024 primaries and was soundly defeated. What’s more, she was annihilated among the former movement conservative base, the “very conservative” voter, as well as the traditionally more establishment-friendly “somewhat conservatives.”

The exit polls from her home state, South Carolina, make that much clear. The state’s balance of voters closely matches the national Republican average, and its primary winner almost always goes on to capture the nomination. Haley nonetheless lost her home state by more than 20 points — she lost among conservatives by 42 points. Some of her strongest support came from voters who were enthusiastic or satisfied with the way things were going in America under then-President Joe Biden. No wonder she only won two jurisdictions, heavily Democratic Vermont and the District of Columbia, and performed well in safely Democratic counties elsewhere.

The same dynamic has played out in GOP primaries across the nation. Ohio’s 2024 Senate primary offers an excellent example. State Sen. Matt Dolan ran statewide in the 2022 Senate primary, winning just 23% of the vote to JD Vance’s 32%. Dolan had been endorsed by Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) and former Sen. Rob Portman, and outspent his leading competitor, Trump-endorsed car dealer Bernie Moreno, who nevertheless swept to victory with 50% of the vote and carried every single county.

Nonetheless, the new conservative coalition cannot wholly abandon the old guard. Both Christian conservatives and old-guard economic conservatives are still a crucial part of the general-election coalition, as are the plain-vanilla business conservatives. Throw them out, as some on the New Right are wont to propose, and the new populist conservatism is as politically unviable as the old Bush-era version.

The task then is to establish a new set of policies that accommodates all of these factions while tying them together in a principled view of America that draws on but does not simply replicate the traditional conservative views. That’s easier said than done, but what follows is a sketch of what that might look like.

The New Republican Party’s economic policies will have to respect the genius of entrepreneurs and businesspersons while ensuring that the gains to productivity and invention flow as much to workers as they do to investors. That has not happened in the past 45 years. A February Wall Street Journal report showed that the share of gross domestic income that goes to corporate profits, and hence to increased share prices, has almost doubled since 1980, from 7% to 12%. The share that goes to labor compensation has declined from 58% to 52%. That shift lies behind much of middle America’s economic malaise.

Many populist economic policies are meant to reverse this trend. Tariffs and immigration restrictions are intended to create a tighter labor market, which would drive up wages at the expense of corporate profits. Raising child tax credits or establishing a paid family leave program would increase after-tax income for most families, as Trump’s elimination of income taxes on tips and overtime has already done. Adopting an industrial policy to reshore critical manufacturing capabilities would also put upward pressure on wages.

A New Republican economic policy has to include this core principle as co-equal with the traditional emphasis on assisting job creators. The means to accomplish this can be debated, but the coalition cannot endure if populist economic demands, the type that attracted the blue-collar workers on whom the conservative and Republican coalitions now depend, are utterly ignored.

There are many creative ways to do this. Consider housing prices. Before 1997, homeowners could only exempt $125,000 of capital gains from the sale of their principal residence once, and only if they were over 55 years old. The 1997 budget bill replaced that with an exemption of up to $500,000 in capital gains for homeowners of any age when they sold their principal residence, essentially creating a new tax break for owner-occupied housing. Homeowners could now claim this exemption once every two years during their lifetime, provided that they had lived in the home for at least two of the preceding five years.

This measure turned residential real estate into a tax-favored investment strategy, and just as economic theory would predict, home prices began to soar. Returning to the old rules would almost certainly result in a drop in real home prices, which would hurt homeowners. But it would also help young families who are struggling to afford their first houses.

The same mixture of populist impulses and supply-side approaches can tackle the budget. Everyone agrees that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the drivers of the ever-growing deficit. Everyone also agrees that it is politically difficult to cut benefits, but business and old-guard economic conservatives nonetheless promote policies that would do just that in the name of budget discipline. Populists resist such measures in the name of social fairness and political expediency.

This circle can be squared if Republicans combine populist moral impulses with old-guard means. Populists don’t want people who need those benefits to lose them, but all three programs spend a significant amount of money on people who don’t need them. Seniors earning over $100,000 annually in retirement, for example, still have their Medicare premiums heavily subsidized by the government. Those who have substantial additional income can receive up to $100,000 a year or more in Social Security benefits if both partners in a household had high-earning careers. Why not cut subsidies and benefits for these people, who can easily adapt to the reduction in government largesse?

Though essential, the new majority cannot be built on policy compromise alone — it must also rest on a broad, shared vision of America. The New Republican majority, if it is to succeed, must temper its love of liberty with the traditional American belief in self-government and the dignity of every human soul. It must recognize that government is not God, but neither is it the devil. This means it must sometimes push for prudent laws to ensure that all have both security and opportunity.

WHAT IS POST-LIBERALISM, AND WHY IS IT TRENDING?

That latter point extends beyond the physical security that all understand a just government must provide to the economic security that comes from the protection of property and a fair sharing of the gains from trade. It also extends to the social security that comes from knowing one will not suffer from discrimination because of his religious beliefs, gender, or skin color. Liberty without economic and social security can too often descend into the rule by the strong. With it, liberty transcends what hitherto had been possible. It creates that which makes America great: the promise that every person, no matter his talents or background, can have the chance to live a dignified life of his choosing.

Democrats, with their addiction to social planning and incessant hectoring over race and sexuality, have convinced middle America that they do not share a belief in that promise. Republicans have the chance to prove that they do, and with it, to build the new majority that alone can preserve and renew our 250-year journey from, in Reagan’s words, “the swamp to the stars.”