In the 2024 election, former President Donald Trump and Senator and Vice-Presidential nominee JD Vance have embraced a form of conservative populism focused on social and cultural issues. Basak Kus traces the roots of this contemporary conservative populism to the “New Right” movement, which emerged after Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign, and highlights how it diverged from the “Old Right” that had previously defined the Republican Party, and how it is shaping conservative politics today. In contrast, she observes that Vice President Harris and Governor Tim Walz’s campaign centers on social democratic populism, with a focus on the “opportunity economy” and economic prosperity for all.
Former President Donald Trump, Senator and Vice-Presidential nominee JD Vance, are promoting a socially conservative agenda (as evidenced by their links to Project 2025) which is wrapped in populist discourse. While it may seem like a new chapter in American politics, the roots of contemporary conservative populism can be traced back to the New Right movement that emerged half a century ago.
Barry Goldwater and the New Right
The New Right emerged in the 1970s as a faction within the conservative movement, distinct from the traditional Old Right. This new faction was heralded by Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. As Lewis Lapham, the former editor of the Harper’s Magazine and the founder of Lapham’s Quarterly, noted in 2004, a cowboy-hatted, plain-spoken conservative with anti-establishment rhetoric, Goldwater struck a chord with many conservatives who felt sidelined by the East Coast intellectual elite that had long dominated the Republican Party. Although his campaign ended in defeat, it sparked a shift that would shape the Republican Party for decades, ushering in a new generation of conservatives with a distinctly populist approach.
Paul Weyrich, a pivotal figure in the New Right, often dubbed the “Lenin of social conservatism,” describes the differences between two currents in this way: the conservatism of the Old Right, prior to the 1970s, was predominantly a phenomenon of the upper classes, marked by strong intellectualism. In contrast, the New Right saw itself as a movement speaking to middle class and blue-collar America, although not primarily in economic terms. While the Old Right was aloof, and stayed away from the spotlight—a holdover from the McCarthy era’s fear of media scrutiny—the New Right actively engaged with the media. The Old Right placed a high value on laissez-faire economics, but the New Right, though also championing limited government and free enterprise, recognized that “eighteenth-century British economic theory did not pertain very clearly” to mid-century American working-class people, and thus emphasized social and cultural issues. Moreover, unlike the Old Right’s “live and let live” philosophy, the New Right expected the government to uphold certain moral truths aligned with Christian social teachings. This shift in emphasis meant that many policies that were not at all favorable for the economic fortunes of middle and working-class Americans were packaged in a socially conservative message.
President Ronald Reagan Meeting with Senator Barry Goldwater in The Oval Office. 12/12/84; Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A new brand of conservative populism
This brand of populism embraced by the New Right differed not only from the established political and cultural stance of the Republican Party but also from earlier populist movements in the US in both its goals and style. As Georgetown University historian, Michael Kazin explained, American populism had taken root as a movement that centered on economic demands, drawing support from small farmers and skilled workers. In the late 19th century, populists opposed the dominance of industrial corporations and large landowners, supported trade unions, advocated for the regulation of railroad rates, and criticized tight money policies. The populist style embraced by the New Right a century later, on the other hand, defined itself primarily by socially conservative ideals, rather than economic demands, defending the churchgoing, home-owning middle-class American family with a male breadwinner and a stay-at-home mother against liberal politicians, welfare recipients, feminists, and left-wing radicals.
Since the Reagan administration of the 1980s, many elements of this New Right conservative populism have been embraced by Republican administrations, with figures like JD Vance and Project 2025 being the latest iteration. For these conservative populists, the biggest threats aren’t the climate crisis, the unaffordability of higher education, housing, or retirement, but rather transgender people, divorced couples, and unmarried, childless women. Project 2025’s website lists no policies to address economic issues like wealth inequality, wage stagnation, or corporate power.
Instead, it focuses on banning “biological males from competing in women’s sports” and promises to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” The project claims the American family is “in crisis,” citing high rates of children born to unmarried mothers, especially among Black Americans. It condemns pornography and “transgender ideology,” and supports Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership,” which prioritizes items like repealing net neutrality, reshaping national monuments, and defunding international abortion groups, with little focus on economic policies to uplift middle- and working-class Americans.
A new social democratic populism
Against Democratic candidates like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton—perceived as technocratic coastal elites—conservative populism worked in the past and could succeed again. However, the Harris-Walz ticket seems to have learned from those defeats, and is embracing a social democratic brand of populism in response to the Trump-Vance style of conservative populism. New data from YouGov (Figure 1) shows that most Americans oppose key pillars of Project 2025, which are explicitly or implicitly endorsed by the Trump-Vance ticket. A new national poll conducted by UMASS Amherst survey researchers similarly indicates these policies are unpopular among Americans. Meanwhile, Pew Research Center data (Figure 2) shows that the price of food and consumer goods, the cost of housing, and employment remain top concerns.
Figure 1 – Percentage of Americans who support Project 2025 policy proposals
Source: YouGov
Figure 2 – Percentage surveyed who are very concerned about certain economic issues
Source: Pew Research Center
While it is still too early to predict how this will all play out, the Harris-Walz ticket may well have a chance to win in November, especially if they highlight their message about what Harris calls the “opportunity economy” whose key elements involve lowering the price of food and consumer goods, making housing more affordable (through a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers and construction of new housing units), decreasing cost of healthcare through lowering the price prescription drugs, and providing medical debt relief, and creating jobs with economic security and dignity—all widely supported by Americans.
Writing in 1998, during the heyday of the Clinton administration, American historian Michael Kazin made a prescient observation:
“I am convinced that progressive intellectuals need to reclaim and revise the language of populism, to speak within it, not against it. This will require us to avoid demonization, scapegoating, paranoia, romantic myths about ‘the people’ and all the other excesses of the idiom. But for many ordinary Americans, and not just white ones, populism of one variety or another still sounds like common sense… In the end, to speak in populist ways is to practice … ‘connected criticism.’ It is to argue about issues and propose solutions with an empathetic mind and heart, staying within well-grooved national traditions.”
If the Harris-Walz ticket can effectively embrace that “connected criticism,” their form of populism may yet find more favor with voters.
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