What conservative goals were realized in the Reagan administration?

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Figure false: Ronald Reagan Addresses Religious Conservatives
Figure false: Reagan’s victory in 1980 helped to reshape the Republican Party by attracting millions of evangelical Christians. In his 1983 address to the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and appealed to religious conservatives with strong words about abortion and prayer in the schools, rejoicing that “America is in the midst of a spiritual awakening and a moral renewal.” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

CHRONOLOGY

1979

  • – Moral Majority is founded.

1980

  • – Ronald Reagan is elected president.

1981

  • – Economic Recovery Tax Act.

1983

  • – Family Research Council is founded.

1984

  • – Reagan is reelected president.

THE ELECTION OF RONALD REAGAN in 1980 marked the most important turning point in politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932. Reagan’s victory established conservatism’s dominance in the Republican Party, while Democrats searched for voter support by moving toward the right. The United States was not alone in this political shift. Conservatives rose to power in Britain, West Germany, Canada, and Sweden, while socialist and social democratic governments elsewhere trimmed their welfare states.

The Reagan administration embraced the conservative Christian values of the New Right, but it left its most important mark on the economy: victory over inflation, deregulation of industry, enormous tax cuts, and a staggering federal budget deficit. Popular culture celebrated financial success and displaying wealth, but poverty increased and economic inequality grew. Although the Reagan era did not see a policy revolution comparable to that of the New Deal, it dealt a sharp blow to the liberalism that had informed American politics since the 1930s.