The 40-Year-Old Conservative

On Sunday morning, the Wall Street Journal published an in-depth analysis of the “Policy War in Washington” between “old-school conservatives” and the “New Right.” It has lots of great color; you should read the whole thing. My favorite part was Grover Norquist telling the reporters he never thinks about American Compass, right after the paragraph about how he sends his staff to stand outside our events on Capitol Hill distributing anti-Compass flyers. 

While the story never makes this point explicitly, its central theme—and the key to understanding what’s happening on the right-of-center—is a generational divide. Roughly speaking, people born before 1980 overwhelmingly adhere to the old-school market fundamentalism that emerged from the Reagan revolution. People born after 1980 overwhelmingly reject it and want to rethink the application of conservative principles in the 21st century.

I’ve always been particularly cognizant of the divide because I sit near the seam and have worked with many people on both sides. Born in 1983, I was five years old when Ronald Reagan left office. People just a couple of years older than me can tell you where they were when the Berlin Wall fell, or at least they remember the reactions of their parents. My first political memory is watching fighter jets launch from aircraft carriers on CNN during the Gulf War.