Enough is enough, and the last thing Republicans will want to do in 2024 is defend the coronavirus response of 2020 or the opera buffa of these last four years. To turn a page, the GOP should look for leadership to Republican governors now acquitting themselves well during the pandemic: Larry Hogan of Maryland, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, and Mike DeWine of Ohio.

Republicans should think more broadly in terms of policy, too. Ronald Reagan preached a principled conservatism in 1980. Since his retirement from public life in 1994, the GOP has engaged in an intramural race further and further to the Right, with a detour into populism’s dark corners over the past four years. But earlier in the 20th century, there was also a proud strain of progressive Republicanism. It deserves a fresh look.

Progressive Republicanism began with Theodore Roosevelt, was maintained by men such as Elihu Root, Henry Stimson, Thomas Dewey, and Nelson Rockefeller, and reached its heights under Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush. It had intellectual roots in the “internal improvements” tradition of Whigs such as Henry Clay and the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, and the “One Nation” Toryism of Benjamin Disraeli in Britain.