[unseen1]

populist: pop·u·list [ póppyəlist ] 1.supporter of ordinary people: an advocate of the rights and interests of ordinary people, e.g. in politics or the arts 2.of ordinary people: emphasizing or promoting ordinary people, their lives, or their interests Reagan's entire message was populist at its core: It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government." This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power -- is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

[Blackandproud]

Reagan was first and foremost a Conservative. He supported Conservative ideas regardless of whether they were popular. The “rights and interests of ordinary people” is so ambiguous as to be absurd and meaningless. All politicians spew those empty words. Even Obama, Ted Kennedy and Reverend Wright claimed to be an advocate of ordinary people.

The real distinction between being a populist and a Conservative (or liberal for that matter) is whether you will stand on unpopular principles based on ideology in the face of majority opposition. Reagan did in supporting the Contras, Judge Bork, being against abortion and in cutting government programs.