re: What Would Reagan Think of Trump?

I've similarly pondered how my staunchly conservative grandfather would have reacted towards Trump. I'm sure he would have been completely satisfied with Trump's policies and agendas, as my grandfather belonged to that older vein of bootstraps conservatism with its populist bent of country-first, pro-manufacturing, hardline social views, and anti-FDR style central planners. My grandfather never really fit in all that well with the more modern, academic slants of National Review columnists, free-traders, globalists, or libertine libertarians of the latter-half of the 20th century.

On the other hand, I don't think my grandfather would cotton much to Trump on a personal level. Trump's New York 'mouthiness' and trashtalk would have been interpreted by him as reflecting weakness. But even moreso, I think Trump's obsessive 'me-me-me' self-referencing would have been something my grandfather would have particularly recoiled from. That sort of thing was very antithetical to his generational worldview, when taking the measure of a man. So overall, it would have been a mixed bag. Happy with policies, supporting him, but remaining quite wary of him. That's how I'd see my grandfather going.