1. Reaganomics
--Also known as "trickle-down theory" or "voodoo economics," Reaganomics consists of deficit-financed tax cuts for (primarily) the rich, while gutting welfare and other public services. This is the dominant economic model that has existed in America since the Reagan years: rubber-stamped by Republican successors, as well by two Democratic Presidents (Clinton and Obama). Trump's main economic policy was a Reaganite tax cut. President Biden has made the first serious attempt to overturn Reaganomics, with limited success, due to narrow or non-existent congressional majorities. The yawning gap in income/wealth inequality that has been tearing our country apart for decades is at its core a conservative project.
2. De-industrialization
--Going hand-in-hand with Reaganomics was the project of off-shoring American industry in order to lower costs for multinational firms and create "economic efficiencies." Once again, this policy succeeded mainly in handing boatloads of cash to the capitalist elite while littering the rest of America with Rust Belts. Once again, Reagan's successors (including Clinton and Obama) doubled-down on this pro-capital project. This started to change when Trump talked a big game on "bringing jobs home," and exited/re-negotiated trade deals, but he failed in his maximal promises of sparking an American manufacturing renaissance. Biden has continued with "buy American" initiatives - part of a growing and overdue bipartisan skepticism of globalism as the cure for all our social ills.
3. "The War on Drugs"
--The phrase was coined by Richard Nixon, echoing LBJ's earlier slogan, "War on Poverty." This ushered in a period of mass incarceration in America, re-doubled again in the '80s and '90s. Libertarians within both the Republican and Democratic Parties have fought it off and on, but it's remained the state's basic punitive approach toward a problem better handled as a social and mental health issue.
4. The Iraq War
--Reflexive support for George W. Bush's horribly misguided war in Iraq became a litmus test for right-"patriotic Americans" during the '00s. Trump talked a big game on opposing the Iraq War, even though Trump didn't hold office at the time, didn't have to face any votes on the subject, and obviously wasn't leading anti-war marches which were, just as they were during the Vietnam War, a project of the political Left. Democratic opposition to the Iraq War hardened much earlier than the GOP's realization of its folly.
Caption this Meme 