The biggest political event for conservatives in the last decade was Donald Trump’s slow trip down the escalator. But maybe the second biggest was the swift rise of what’s often been called the “new right.”
Though that collection has been understood as a hodgepodge of populists, nationalists, neo-mercantilists, post-liberals, and Catholic integralists, the components have been connected by a frustration with the conservative establishment’s libertarianism and inability to solve a host of longstanding social and economic challenges.
Like all political insurgencies, the new right came on the scene with great energy and even more ambition. The movement quickly attracted attention (much of it critical) as well as adherents (often young and brash). A decade on, we should assess its influence. I’ll leave the political and electoral analysis to others. But in terms of at least one critical area of policy thinking—the ideas related to family and community—its best, most responsible thinkers deserve two cheers out of three. And this is coming from someone who’s been occasionally critical of the new right.
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Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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