American Populism Through the Ages

It has been often said the ultimate value of conservatism and populism is to question authority, to question the status quo, and to move away from corrupting “bigness” and move back toward the citizenry. Sometimes the Democratic Party runs against the corrupt status quo, as did FDR, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Other times, the Republican Party does, as with Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.

This time, Donald J. Trump ran on a platform of anti-corruption, anti-Washington and anti-Bigness...

In what is perhaps the most upset election of American history, the experts, the media, the pollsters, all were proven wrong by the American people and the American electorate.

Trump represents much — not all but much — that American conservatism had strived for over the years. An outsider who has a skeptical view of not just the government establishment, but the importance of conservative judges and conservative members of the cabinet in order to restrain government. A survey of history shows that Trump is not a detour, but consistent with American presidential tradition.

Thomas Jefferson

The author of the Declaration of Independence was of course a figure skeptical of the government. The Declaration itself said this. “In the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Andrew Jackson

If everything had gone the way he wanted, Andrew Jackson, hero of the War of 1812 who was president for two terms 1829 to 1837, should have been president four years earlier...

Teddy Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt is known to modern culture for his tough and heroic qualities. It’s become an internet trend to reference his hardiness. If any man wants to emulate the pinnacle of presidential masculinity, it’s said, look to Teddy.

    "We are standing for the great fundamental rights upon which all successful free government must be based," said Roosevelt.

And he supported populism. And was an educated, Ivy League and rich elitist, all at the same time...

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan, the Republican President who presided over the defeat of Soviet communism, also ran on a populist, anti-corruption, anti-bigness message.

Winning the presidential election against incumbent president Jimmy Carter of Georgia was no easy feat. He had to show his age was not a defeating issue, his conservatism was a good issue, his experience was an enabling issue. But the American people looked past all of that, in the end, and looked at his policies...

Reagan defined the conservative movement, turning a dying party into a party of American liberties, American freedom, and American individualism, away from big government dependency and bureaucratic red tape and corruption. After all, he really was a man of the Midwest.

Donald Trump

Now comes President-Elect Donald J. Trump. The 2016 presidential race is being called the Brexit of America, both for the shocking results and for the similarity in tone and of platforms.

While his background is not like an everyday American, Trump certainly speaks like one. His entire platform, and indeed his slogan "Make America Great Again," appeals to the everyday man and woman who had been disenfranchised or affected by the Administration under President Obama and the collusion between big government and big corporations. The factory workers of Michigan who had jobs taken to Mexico or China, the coal workers in West Virginia, who have seen elitist solar subsidies make their jobs obsolete, the policemen all across who have had to deal with an increasingly divisive president on race issues: all these groups, and more, have looked to Trump as the ultimate Anti-Establishment Candidate. Trump is perhaps the first major candidate in American history to use Twitter — a normal, everyday social media program — to run his campaign. We would see more tweets than official press releases from him during any given time...

Much like Reagan, Trump can bring the American people together in pursuit of more freedom, less government

His tweet about needing "to #DrainTheSwamp in DC" struck a chord with many. They recognized that the past eight years — some would say the past 16 years — were nothing but bureaucratic after bureaucratic, corrupt after corrupt, hateful after hateful policies coming from the nation’s capital. What should be the people leading the government instead became the government leading themselves. And so, Trump promised to "drain the swamp." While the phrase for American politics did not originate with the Republican candidate, it certainly appealed to the working, everyday American...