To What Extent Did Ronald Reagan Achieve The Goals Of The New Right Conservative

The early 1980s was a strenuous one for America, as it had been involved with the Vietnam War, various presidential scandals, and various conflicts in the middle east. In addition to this, the rising tax rates affected many families and businesses. This led to economic trouble, where for an average American family, going into debt was the only way to maintain their normal lifestyle. It was during this time that Ronald Reagan became president. He was a New Right Conservative, with many conservative policies. He acted on his conservative beliefs during office. Ultimately, I believe that Ronald Reagan mostly achieved the economic and foreign policy goals of New Right Conservatives by lowering taxes for a free market, developing a stronger military

The tax situation in the United States was tense. Supporting the wars and other expenses, the government slowly crept the tax rates up. In accordance with this, inflation was another problem. Goods got more expensive, and led to other problems. At this point, for the average American family, “being in debt was the only way for people to get some of their income back from the government and experience a rise in living standards.”(Doc. 1) This was one of the issues that got Reagan to his presidency. He supported the conservative ideal of lowering taxes. Under his presidency, tax rates dropped. In total, his plan was to drop the tax rates by 25% in three years, which was a huge policy that the conservatives wanted to push. The result of this was that businesses got more money to invest, leading to more employment and generally higher living standards. In this aspect, he succeeded in achieving the New Right

In the cold war, both the Soviet Union and the United States were building up a nuclear arsenal. The nature of the ballistic missiles dictated that if one side was to launch them, it would be virtually impossible to stop them all. Instead of attempting to de-escalate, Reagan acted in a conservative, aggressive manner, and promoted a strategic defense system. It was an orbital system that could theoretically stop all Soviet-launched ballistic missiles. According to A Star Wars Solution, “We[Americans] must show the Soviets both that we can deploy a strategic defense system soon and that we will negotiate over its deployment if they are willing to make stabilizing reductions…” This shows that Reagan was looking for creative ways to gain more power, which he equated to as more power in negotiations. Although he was not that aggressive as to promote war, he did try to get better weapons, increase military spending, and put in place various other things like the SDI to gain more power than the Soviets. Some would argue that Reagan’s stance on military superiority was almost too much. Vastly improving our military led to other changes that people did not like. A comic from Paul Conrad in the L.A. Times illustrates this. A fighter jet is shown, with various parts labeled as things like, “Medicare Cuts,” “Food Stamp Cuts,” “Student Loan Cuts,” among other things.