Past Republican efforts to limit the growth of entitlement spending after GOP landslides in 1994 and 2010 backfired politically, helping to reelect presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The fact is that 63 percent of Trump voters care more about keeping Social Security benefits than preventing tax hikes, and 45 percent care more about giving seniors on Medicare what they need than about controlling program costs. People who backed Obama in 2012 but Trump in 2020 were even more supportive of keeping entitlement programs over controlling costs. Any serious effort to retain these largely working-class voters — and attract more in the future — must come to grips with these views.

That can be done only if conservatism moves away from its decades-long allergy to government action. There’s a middle ground between government directing everything or nothing. As I showed in my book on Reagan, the conservative idol implicitly sanctioned government action if it helped people live dignified lives of their own choosing. Modern conservatism needs to refine Reagan’s insights and explicitly adopt a theory of when government should act to enhance people’s lives.

Conservative icon Russell Kirk showed that conservatism rests on the idea of prudent change. Today’s conservatives need to act prudently, but above all, they need to change. Only a renewed conservatism that abandons market fundamentalism will permanently attract the working class the movement needs to prevail.