The Future Politics of Market Liberalism: “Are We a Permanent Minority?”

In the eighties Ronald Reagan often compared himself with Roosevelt and Republican partisans certainly hoped that his 1980 electoral victory heralded an equivalent mighty political realignment. One close student of the liberal tradition did characterize Reagan as “The Roosevelt of the Right,” but Alonzo Hamby was quick to add that if Reagan and Roosevelt shared certain qualities — buoyant personalities, heavy reliance on communication skills to energize their presidencies, an ideological rhetoric tougher than actual policy, and a relative indifference to details and policy contradictions — Reagan ultimately accomplished less than did Roosevelt. “The one goal,” noted Hamby, “that consistently eluded him, and the one that Roosevelt achieved, was that of an enduring political realignment in the form of a broad coalition of interest groups loosely held together by an ideology.”1 The Reagan Presidency was a coalition of disparate and competing elements: New Rightists, libertarians, neoconservatives and paleoconservatives. Of these groups only the libertarians supported an across-the-board market liberalism.2