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Railway Safety Act Presents GOP Choice: Tired Dogma or the Common Good?
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Four years ago, Donald Trump gave hope to all apostates from the Church of Reagan and Latter-Day Fusionists.

The modern conservative movement is the child of a marriage between military hawks, business libertarians, and (white) social traditionalists. This union the fusion of political elements that is known as fusionism was a bit tense from its inception. Not only was there little inherent relationship between the concerns of the movement’s disparate factions but, in some cases, those concerns even appeared contradictory: Some libertarians retained an attachment to the right’s pre–World War II isolationism, while many cultural conservatives bristled at the corporate right’s cosmopolitan attitude towards immigration.

American Compass represents the most intellectually honest tendency within the anti-Establishment right. Founded by Oren Cass, the onetime policy director of Mitt Romney’s decidedly anti-populist 2012 campaign, the think tank takes the GOP Establishment to task for its actual, material betrayals of the party faithful. It packages this dissent in policy papers not Twitter tantrums. Where the right’s other dissidents routinely exaggerate the Republican leadership’s treachery, Cass invariably downplays it. In his narrative, the elites did not sell out the people, they merely failed to update their well-intentioned ideas for new circumstances. This framing is self-serving — Cass is himself an erstwhile Establishmentarian — but it also reflects the seriousness of his substantive challenge to GOP orthodoxy. American Compass isn’t using histrionic rhetoric to disguise the thinness of its policy disagreements with Mitch McConnell. It’s arguing with exquisite politeness that upholding conservative values requires giving labor more power over capital.

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Recommended Reading
Railway Safety Act Presents GOP Choice: Tired Dogma or the Common Good?

The Railway Safety Act of 2023 is a potent signal of a sea-change in how conservatives in Washington are approaching their most basic task: governance for the common good.

Oren Cass on Fox Business’s Making Money with Charles Payne

Oren Cass joins Fox Business’s Charles Payne to discuss the Cost-of-Thriving Index and economic pressure on American families

The 2023 Cost-of-Thriving Index

Tracking the catastrophic erosion of middle-class life in America