“Reagan’s speech, given on his birthday at the 1977 Conservative Political Action Conference, explored how to combine different types of conservatives into ‘a new, lasting majority.’ To bring together economic and social conservatives, even though they did not see eye to eye on every issue, he argued that this required ‘compromise, but not a compromise of basic principle.’ Reagan’s success in creating this new synthesis set the basis for the modern, pre-Trump GOP,” Henry Olsen writes.
