Julia Letlow

U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow speaks during a campaign rally in her run for U.S. Senate Tuesday, October 20, 2026, at RockÕnÕBowl in Lafayette, La.

Having barely survived a severely underfunded challenge, and amidst the smoldering ruins of the Trump-Vance regime, Louisiana’s Sen.-elect Julia Letlow has a choice:

She can dance with the raging ruler who chose her for the Senate, or she can realize she’ll be in office four years longer than President Donald Trump and therefore act with the nation’s long-term good in mind.

Both the country’s cause and Letlow’s own political viability dictate a return to the principles of Ronald Reagan’s conservatism, not Trumpism. We haven’t seen those principles in action since before the 9/11 jihadist attacks.

For philosophically inclined readers, suffice it to say that Reagan’s conservative movement draws heavily on James Madison’s pragmatism and devotion to the means (rather than any particular ends) of constitutional republicanism, with plenty of John Locke in the mix along with some Adam Smith, some Montesquieu, some Edmund Burke, some de Tocqueville and a bit of William F. Buckley, Jack Kemp and others. (If you don’t know their philosophies, look ’em up.)

Madison and Reagan distrusted centralized power (except for executive authority over military and foreign affairs) and shared an understanding that government’s primary aim is to protect individual liberty. They both believed that most of the other blessings desired by people of goodwill are ones which flow naturally from that well-ordered, well-protected liberty.

OK, enough with theoreticians; let’s get down to brass tacks. The economic component of Reaganism arises directly from that belief in the power of liberty. Free markets, undergirded by a modest but efficient social safety net, are considered the most effective means of human flourishing.

Tariffs that are high or capricious, or both, should be anathema. They force up prices in the short run and slow down the economy in the long term, while letting the government choose economic winners and losers without net gain (and often a net loss) for the economy as a whole.

As this newspaper has noted repeatedly, this distaste for tariffs should apply especially for those representing Louisiana, because so much of our state’s economy stems from ports and foreign commerce. If Letlow is to bow abjectly to Trump’s tariff fetish, she will directly undermine Louisiana’s interests while hobbling the national economy.

It isn’t just tariffs, though, that are betrayals of Reagan conservatism. So are the economic shares — literally, ownership — that Trump’s government has taken (probably illegally) in at least 43 private companies. A tactic straight from dictator Benito Mussolini’s economic practices (note: this is an economics-only comparison, having nothing to do with Nazism), this state corporatism is a dangerous betrayal both of Reagan conservatism and of the Founders’ healthy distrust of centralized power. Ominously, it also can be a steppingstone to authoritarianism.

Moreover, Letlow not only should balk at, but should actively oppose, Trump’s abject servility to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and frequent praise of other dictators in China, North Korea and elsewhere. And polls consistently show that the American public overwhelmingly supports Ukraine in its war defending against Russia’s evil invasion. Letlow will be in office at least four years longer than the electorally discredited Trump; she owes him no fealty on matters that could hurt both Louisiana’s and America’s interests and moral authority long after he permanently absconds to Mar-a-Lago.

In another break from true conservatism, Trump also has spent taxpayer dollars at astonishing rates, leading to $2 trillion annual deficits.

Then there’s immigration, where admittedly even Reagan and Kemp were slight outliers among conservatives in their embrace of new Americans, with Reagan devoting the final words of his last presidential speech to that cause. But not even the immigration restrictionists of Reagan’s era would have countenanced the reign of terror that Trump’s ICE unleashed on American streets or the hideously abusive conditions in immigrant detention centers.

And these are only a few examples of Trump’s abundant policy divergences from Reagan conservatism. The even more obvious break from Reaganism is in tone. Reagan was eager to draw policy contrasts but, unlike Trump, rarely made them harshly personal. Whereas Trump’s divide-and-conquer verbal viciousness did garner two squeakily narrow wins against historically unpopular opponents, Reagan’s sunny, please-come-join-us message earned a 49-state majority (losing the 50th state by less than two-tenths of a percent) against a wrong-viewed but eminently likable Walter Mondale.

Last week, the American people gave the Trump Republican Party a thrashing up and down the ballot. An analysis in the conservative National Review showed it was not merely a large loss: “Republicans were obliterated.”

Letlow can stick with the Trumpism that was obliterated, or she can pivot toward the historically successful Reagan model. The right — the politically Right — choice is obvious.

Email Quin Hillyer at [email protected]