The Old Right is an informal designation used for a branch of American conservatism that was most prominent from 1910 to the mid-1950s, but never became an organized movement. Most members were Republicans, although there was a conservative Democratic element based largely in the Southern United States. They are termed the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors who came to prominence in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Most were unified by their defense of authority, tradition, morality, religion, limited government, rule of law, civic nationalism, capitalism, social conservatism, anti-Communism, anti-socialism, anti-Zionism, and anti-imperialism, as well as their skepticism of democracy and the growing power of Washington. The Old Right typically favored laissez-faire classical liberalism; some were business-oriented conservatives; others were ex-radical leftists who moved sharply to the right, such as the novelist John Dos Passos. Still others, such as the Democrat Southern Agrarians, were traditionalists who dreamed of restoring a pre-modern communal society. Above all, Murray Rothbard wrote, the Old Right were unified by opposition to what they saw as the danger of "domestic dictatorship" by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal program. The Old Right's devotion to anti-imperialism and isolationism was at odds with the interventionist goal of global democracy, the top-down transformation of local heritage, social and institutional engineering of the political left and some from the modern right-wing.
The Old Right per se has faded as an organized movement, but many similar ideas are found among paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians.
History and views
The Old Right came into being when the Republican Party (GOP) split in 1910, and was influential within that party into the 1940s. They pushed Theodore Roosevelt and his progressive followers out in 1912. From 1933, many Democrats became associated with the Old Right through their opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and his New Deal Coalition, and with the Republicans formed the Conservative Coalition to block its initiatives. Conservatives disagreed on foreign policy, and the Old Right favored non-interventionist policies on Europe at the start of World War II. After the war, they opposed President Harry Truman's domestic and foreign policies. The last major battle was led by Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, who was defeated by Dwight D Eisenhower for the presidential nomination in 1952. The new conservative movement later led by William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan adopted much of the domestic anti-New Deal conservatism of the Old Right, but broke with it by demanding free trade and an aggressive, internationalist, interventionist, and anti-communist foreign policy.
Historian George H. Nash argues:
Unlike the "moderate", internationalist, largely eastern bloc of Republicans who accepted (or at least acquiesced in) some of the "Roosevelt Revolution" and the essential premises of President Truman's foreign policy, the Republican Right at heart was counter-revolutionary. Anti-collectivist, anti-Communist, anti-New Deal, passionately committed to limited government, free market economics, and congressional (as opposed to executive) prerogatives, the G.O.P. conservatives were obliged to wage a constant two-front war: against liberal Democrats from without and "me-too" Republicans from within.
The Old Right emerged in opposition to the New Deal and to FDR personally; it drew from multiple sources. Hoff says, "moderate Republicans and leftover Republican Progressives like Hoover composed the bulk of the Old Right by 1940, with a sprinkling of former members of the Farmer–Labor party, Non-Partisan League, and even a few midwestern prairie Socialists."
By 1937, partisans of the Old Right had formed a Conservative coalition that controlled Congress until 1964. They were consistently non-interventionist and opposed entering World War II, a position exemplified by the America First Committee. Later, most opposed U.S. entry into NATO and intervention in the Korean War. "In addition to being staunch opponents of war and militarism, the Old Right of the postwar period had a rugged and near-libertarian honesty in domestic affairs as well."
This anti-New Deal movement was a coalition of multiple groups: business Republicans like Robert A. Taft and Raymond E. Baldwin; conservative Democrats like Josiah Bailey, Al Smith and John W. Davis; libertarians like H. L. Mencken and Garet Garrett and mass media tycoons like William Randolph Hearst and Colonel Robert R. McCormick.