The Reagan coalition Republicans are now subservient to Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. The Reagan coalition has over the past 10 years let their position of power in the Republican Party slip away—such that it would, as of now, appear unlikely that any member of their faction has the capability to win the Republican nomination in 2028 over more MAGA-types.
The Reaganite alliance with MAGA has not only seen their power within the Republican Party diminish, but is actively allying with a faction that rejects everything the American conservative movement represented for decades. The MAGA movement isn’t conservative, it’s shown no regard for the state’s rights, Atlanticism and fiscal conservatism of the Reagan Right. It’s time the American conservative movement began looking into a new path forward.
Perhaps that path forward could stem from the ideas of Germany’s Iron Chancellor.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany and Chancellor Klemens von Metternich of Austria are in many ways similar. No reasonably knowledgeable person would question Bismarck’s or Metternich’s conservatism and conviction to maintain the established order. Despite these similarities, Bismarck was far more successful than Metternich in preserving order. In 1815, during the Congress of Vienna, Metternich set out to preserve both the European balance of power and the internal order of the Austrian Empire—which would eventually fail.
In 1848, Metternich’s counterrevolutionary masterpiece came crumbling down under its own weight. A series of reformist revolutionary movements broke out across Europe—including in Austria. These liberalizing reforms drove Metternich from office, created Hungarian autonomy, and forced the House of Habsburg to adopt a new constitution. While the March Constitution was disbanded only two years later it wasn’t by the hand of Metternich but rather the new Austrian monarch, Emperor Franz Joseph. Metternich ultimately failed to resist the reformist and revolutionary movements that resulted in his personal fall from grace.
To the north, in Prussia (and later Germany), Bismarck proved far more successful in resisting revolution like that which had earlier broken the Austrian order. Bismarck took power in Prussia in 1862—and while Prussia had endured minor liberalizing reforms in the 1848 revolutions they were mostly reversed or insignificant. Bismarck’s competence as a statesman has many examples—from unifying Germany, to seizing colonies. However, what American conservatives could learn from are his counterrevolutionary policies.
Bismarck’s counterrevolutionary policies stand almost entirely unique—perhaps only paralleled by Benjamin Disraeli’s concoction of one-nation conservatism in the United Kingdom. While the practices implemented by Metternich and his contemporaries in Vienna dismissed the people’s revisionary power, Bismarck embraced it. Bismarck recognized the common workers’ unhappiness would result in a turn to the Social Democratic Party and other socialist organizations—and he took steps to appease the worker.
“The insecurity of the worker is the real cause of their being a peril to the state.” Bismarck realized that through securing the worker they’d be loyal—and so he prepared a series of reforms throughout the 1880s called Staatssozialismus, or State Socialism. State Socialism consisted primarily of three reforms (plus two added after Bismarck had been dismissed from service) that gave birth to the welfare state.
These reforms consisted of the Health Insurance Bill of 1883, Accident Insurance Bill of 1884, and Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889. The additional bills focused on working conditions and hours.
These reforms might be, and were, decried as socialist and radical; however, they were implemented by a man no one would accuse of being reformist or revolutionary, and for the purpose of conserving the establishment. While Bismarck’s State Socialism fell short of his hopes in preserving the societal order, it did succeed in avoiding revolution during the 36 years from the policy’s inauguration in 1883. It took defeat in the First World War to break the German Empire; and even then, some of Bismarck’s ideas, including the welfare state, endured in Germany and the Western world.
Where Bismarck faced a socialist problem, today’s Reaganites face a reactionary problem. Yet the idea of compromise and minor reform as a preservative policy is one they need to follow. This concept isn’t foreign to America.
In the 1990s President Bill Clinton began a process of “triangulation” after the Democratic Party lost the House in 1994. This involved taking some ideas from the Republican-controlled Congress, merging those with his own concepts, and then presenting a new idea for which Clinton could take credit. Through this practice, Clinton established a more moderate and fiscally-responsible Democratic Party—achieving four balanced budgets between 1997 and 2000.
It’s time for American conservatives to implement their own equivalent. The current stance on bipartisan compromise is to call those who practice it “RINOs.” Senators such as Thom Tillis and Susan Collins have been particular victims—which is seemingly the reason for the former’s announcement that he won’t seek reelection in 2026. This practice of criticizing compromisers is counter to the interest of the Reaganites; rather than promote their independence and protect their historical policies, it cedes more of their power to Trump and MAGA.
When compromise is attempted, there must be a group to be compromised with in mind: Bismarck had the workers, Clinton the conservatives. Who would be this group for the Reaganites? The New Democrats, a faction that Clinton bolstered and which continues as a congressional caucus. Since the 1990s they’ve often been the dominant portion of the party; a status now threatened by the progressive resurgence reflected in the recent election in NYC and prospects of Graham Platner in Maine.
It’s far from unprecedented that such groups coalesce. It happened with Clinton’s triangulation, and before. A tenuous coalition of moderates and conservatives within the Republican Party endured from the 1940s to the 1980s. In the 1950s and 1960s there was the rise of the First New Right, led by William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater. While that faction hated the moderate Rockefeller Republicans, they still worked together from the same party to resist the New Deal Coalition to preserve some, albeit differing, ideals including the American tradition of limited government. Bill Clinton once described his faction of the Democratic Party as latter-day “Eisenhower Republicans.”
There’s no reason why such a coalition can’t come to fruition. Instead of resisting the New Deal Coalition, Reaganite conservatives and New Democrats can counter both MAGA’s illiberal tendencies and the newly-rising socialist-progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
—DeWitt Erich Silber is a high school student in New Jersey and international-level competitor in history and geography. He is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Austria.