When Donald Trump won his second term in the White House last fall, a whole host of other politicos and organizations won with him. This includes his campaign staff now working in the administration, Republican backers now serving in the Cabinet, and a loose collection of intellectuals that dubs itself the New Right. Among the most prominent of these New Right figures is Oren Cass, the founder of a think tank called American Compass, who takes a victory lap and looks to the future in his new book, The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry, which was released by Diversion Books on June 5.

For Cass, who founded American Compass in 2020, Trump’s victory also represented a triumph, not so much over then-Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats as over the “Old Right” and its “free trade, open borders, and anti-worker agenda.” “As of about 5:00pm eastern time on Election Day 2024, one could still find pundits opining that the Republican Party would have done better nominating Ambassador Nikki Haley,” Cass writes. “By midnight, all that was over.”

Just as Trump vanquished rivals including Haley, Jeb Bush, Mike Pompeo, and Chris Christie, Cass calls out his rivals in the Washington think tank world, saying his 5-year-old outfit with just 10 employees and $2 million in funding outcompeted the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, R Street Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, all of whom backed an outdated “market fundamentalism.” American Compass instead advocates domestic industry, the working class, and a balance between government and the market. A related aim is to shift the government’s focus........

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