The retreat of enforcing the country's antitrust laws has had one of the largest impacts on working-class Americans and their mostly stagnant wages, said the senior editor of the Washington Monthly.
In his essay, How To Make Conservatism Great Again, Phillip Longman writes that in order to save the party from Trumpism, Republicans need to once again take on monopolists.
"The lack of enforcement of these policies, which is not a liberal or conservative idea, it's an American idea, was largely responsible for hollowing out middle America," Longman said. "And that, in turn, has created the social isolation, the downward mobility and anger, and the support for Trump and Trumpism."
In the aftermath of Mitt Romney's failed attempt for the White House in 2012, a young group of conservatives known as "reformicons" emerged into the political landscape.
Longman said they spent much of the last four years crafting policy proposals, many of which focused on monopoly busting, that they thought would benefit working-class people. But they had little luck getting it into the Republican Party's platform.
"Today you'd have to say most of that work is moot in the sense that the party paid no attention. The future of conservatism has just never been more in play than it is as we speak right now," Longman said.
Longman said so many of the problems rural Americans face today are the direct result of a retreat in antitrust policies that had until somewhat recently been extremely effective at equalizing economic opportunity.
"There was a very powerful anti-monopoly movement that existed in the United States well into the 19th century, and actually reached its climax in the 1960s, and in many ways was so successful in producing mass prosperity, a gigantic middle class, that people took it for granted and almost literally wrote it out of history," Longman said.
For example, Longman pointed to a proposed merger in the 1960s between two grocery store chains in metropolitan Los Angeles that would have led to a combined 7 percent of market share. But in the spirit of antitrust, it was denied.
Compare that to today where giant corporations enjoy nearly entire markets. For example, Longman said, Walmart controls a giant share of the grocery market in metropolitan areas in U.S.
And with that vast ownership, Longman said, the company "engages in business practices that were flat out illegal in 1970s."
Longman said several forces emerged in the '70s to dismantle antitrust and other fair trade laws, which remain on the books but seldom enforced. Economists and academics carried the intellectual heft to argue deregulation would drop prices and reduce inflation.
"Unfortunately, with monopolies you get low prices in short run but in long run you get enslavement," Longman said.
Given that both mainstream parties rely heavily on campaign contributions from these giant corporations, Longman said any movement for stricter enforcement of antitrust laws will likely be slow moving.