Five Strands of the American Right Compared in One Table

Ask five Republicans what the party is for and you will get six answers, and every one of them will be delivered with total confidence. One says low taxes. One says the Bible. One says the border. One says strength abroad. One says leave me alone. And each of them, if you press him, believes the other four are a little bit of a problem.

That is not a flaw in the party. It is the architecture. The American right has never been one movement. It is a coalition of at least five distinct strands, each with its own reading list, its own heroes, its own fears and its own pet peeves, tied together by a handful of shared convictions and a strong dislike of the other party's agenda. Once you can tell the strands apart, the arguments in the news stop looking like random shouting and start looking like a familiar family argument, with predictable positions and predictable alliances.

So here is the table. Then I will tell you who in your own life each strand probably describes, what each strand gets right and wrong, and what the party loses if any one of them walks out the door.

The table

Read across a row and you will see the logic of each. Read down a column and you will see the fights. Notice, for example, how the "clash" column is full of the other strands' names. Every strand has an argument with at least two others. That is what a coalition looks like.

Strand one: establishment and business conservatives

This is the strand that gets the most blame and the least credit. Its members run the bank, the hardware store, the trucking firm and the state legislature's finance committee. They believe that a country works best when contracts are honored, the rules are predictable, taxes are modest, and trade is open. Their favorite founding figure is Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary, who built a financial system, a national bank and public credit on which a young country could borrow and grow.

What they get right: the economy is not a morality play, and a business owner who makes payroll every Friday knows something about the real world that a pundit does not. What they get wrong, when they do, is mistaking the interests of established firms for the interests of the market. Our piece on Adam Smith Was Never the Cheerleader for Big Business Liberals Claim makes the distinction. They also tend to underrate the anger of voters who feel that a stable economy has not been stable for them.

Strand two: libertarians

The libertarian strand is smaller in numbers and larger in influence than you would expect. Its thinkers, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and in a different register Ludwig von Mises, supplied much of the intellectual ammunition for the tax-cutting, deregulating, free-market side of the party. Hayek's insight that no planner can gather the scattered knowledge held by millions of people is the best single argument against central planning that anyone has made. Libertarians are suspicious of every kind of power, including the power of conservatives, and that suspicion keeps the right honest.

What they get right: government is a blunt instrument, and the right should have to defend every new power it proposes. What they get wrong, in the view of the other strands, is the belief that liberty can be sustained without a shared moral culture, secure borders and a strong defense. The longer account of the friendly quarrel is in What Libertarians Teach Conservatives and Where the Two Part Ways.

Strand three: social and religious conservatives

Here are the people who knock on doors, staff the pregnancy centers, run the Christian schools and show up on a rainy Tuesday in November. They believe, with Edmund Burke, that society is a partnership between the dead, the living and the unborn, and with Russell Kirk that a free society needs a moral order beneath it. Whole political eras have turned on their energy; the story of how evangelical voters came into the party is told in How Evangelical Voters Became Republican Voters Between 1976 and 1984.

What they get right: laws and institutions do not hold up on their own, and families and congregations are the first line of defense for the poor, the sick and the lonely. What they get wrong, when they do, is trying to win through law what has to be won through persuasion, and speaking in a way that persuades only the already persuaded. Russell Kirk's list of principles is in Russell Kirk's Ten Principles Are the Best Short Course in Conservatism and is worth reading before you form an opinion.

Strand four: the national-security hawks

Hawks are the heirs of Churchill's warnings and of Reagan's formula of peace through strength. They look at the world and see adversaries who respect firmness and exploit hesitation. Many of them came to the Republican Party in the 1970s and 1980s from the Democratic Party's hawkish wing, and the term "neoconservative" was once their label. They are strongest on defense budgets, alliances and sanctions. The fuller picture is in Hawks, Restrainers, Realists and Nationalists on the Right, Compared.

What they get right: weakness invites aggression, and a country that wants peace has to be able to defend itself. What they get wrong, in the view of the strands that disagree, is the habit of treating every distant crisis as an American responsibility without counting the cost in lives and dollars. The 2003 invasion of Iraq remains the argument's hardest case, and hawks and skeptics read it differently.

Strand five: populists and national conservatives

This is the oldest strand in the American story and, in its current form, the newest voice in the party. American populism goes back at least to Andrew Jackson, who cast himself as the champion of the common man against the banks and the Washington insiders. In recent decades it has been argued by Pat Buchanan, whose campaigns of 1992 and 1996 pressed on trade, immigration and foreign commitments, and by writers like Yoram Hazony, whose book The Virtue of Nationalism (2018) defended the nation-state as the best form of political order. A conference under the banner of "national conservatism" met in Washington in 2019.

What they get right: a country is not just an economy, and a policy that raises the national total while hollowing out a town has a human cost that deserves to be counted. What they get wrong, when they do, is the temptation to answer every grievance with a new government power. The place to see how this strand fits the party's history is The Trump Coalition in Historical Context, from Country Club to Cracker Barrel.

Who the strands look like at home

Now the practical part. Here is a hypothetical Thanksgiving table, built for illustration and describing no real family.

• Grandpa owns a hardware store and has hired and fired for forty years. He is your establishment and business conservative. He wants stable rules and an accountant he can understand.
• Your brother reads Hayek on his phone and wants the government out of everything. He is your libertarian.
• Your aunt runs the food pantry at church and homeschools two of her kids. She is your social conservative.
• Your cousin served in the Marines and follows the world news with a pencil in his hand. He is your hawk.
• The neighbor you invited because his plant closed has no patience for anyone in a suit. He is your populist.

Notice something. Every one of those people has a real reason for what he or she believes, and each is right about something the others underrate. Grandpa knows what a bad rule costs. Your brother knows what a bad law costs. Your aunt knows what a family is worth. Your cousin knows what weakness costs. The neighbor knows what it costs when nobody listens. A party that could hear all five would be hard to beat.

What the party loses if a strand leaves

Here is the arithmetic, and I will label it a hypothetical because real voters overlap and nobody sorts so neatly. Imagine a county of 100 voters, with 51 needed to win and only two choices on the ballot. Suppose the Republican coalition there is made up as follows:

• Establishment and business: 12 voters
• Libertarians: 8 voters
• Social and religious conservatives: 14 voters
• Hawks: 9 voters
• Populists: 10 voters

Add them: 12 plus 8 is 20, plus 14 is 34, plus 9 is 43, plus 10 is 53. The party wins with 53, a margin of two over the 51 it needs. Now remove one strand at a time.

• Without the libertarians: 53 minus 8 is 45. Lost.
• Without the hawks: 53 minus 9 is 44. Lost.
• Without the populists: 53 minus 10 is 43. Lost.
• Without the establishment: 53 minus 12 is 41. Lost.
• Without the social conservatives: 53 minus 14 is 39. Lost.

Every single departure, even of the smallest group, turns a win into a defeat. The numbers are invented, but the lesson is real: in a closely divided country, a coalition has no strand it can afford to lose. It is also a reminder that real strands bring more than votes. Business brings money and management. Libertarians bring ideas and the young. Social conservatives bring door-knockers. Hawks bring credibility on defense. Populists bring working-class voters the party would otherwise lack.

The reverse is also true. A strand that insists on getting everything it wants will end up with nothing, because it will lose the others. Frank Meyer, the writer at National Review who pressed the case for combining the libertarian and traditional strands, called the blend fusionism. The deal, and its limits, are explained in Fusionism Was the Deal That Made the Modern Right Possible, and the way Reagan held the pieces together in The Three-Legged Stool Still Holds Up the Republican Party. For the long history of the same quarrels, see Seventy Years of GOP Insurgents Versus the Establishment, in Order.

How to be a good citizen of the coalition

A few practical rules of etiquette make the family easier to live in.

1. Learn the other strands' reading lists. Skim a few chapters of the thinker you disagree with. You may not be persuaded, but you will argue better.
2. Separate the interest from the idea. A businessman who wants a tax change may be right on the merits. A populist who is angry about a factory may be right on the facts. Judge the argument.
3. Name what you agree on first. Limited government, the rule of law, religious liberty, a strong national defense, a growing economy and ordinary families who can get ahead: the list is long.
4. Fight inside the primary, unite for the general. The primary is where we settle which strand leads this time. The general election is where we remember who the opponent is.

The bottom line

• The right is a coalition of five strands: business and establishment conservatives, libertarians, social and religious conservatives, hawks, and populists or national conservatives. Learn which one you are and which ones your neighbors are.
• Each strand gets something important right and underrates something the others see. The arguments are real, and they are not a sign that something is broken.
• In a close country, no strand can leave without a loss. Even the smallest group can decide a tight race.
• When you disagree with another strand, ask what it fears. You will usually find a reasonable fear.
• At your next county meeting, notice which strands are in the room and which are missing, then invite someone who is not there.