Actually, I’d guess Sam meant to say “reactive” rather than “reactionary”. In a narrow technical sense, however, I’d define the Republican Party as reactionary. While the term is often pejorative, it simply means a group or ideology that seeks a return to a previous state. The Republican Party is pretty open about its desire to roll back the machinery of the welfare state that has accumulated since Roosevelt, its desire to roll back legal abortion, affirmative action, and in general most of the social changes that have occured over particularly the last 40 years. “Roll back” should be a good sign that it’s a reactionary party, rather than strictly a conservative party. I feel like it’s somewhat of a contradiction to call yourself a “conservative” and not want to conserve any domestic legislation that happened between 1932 and 1980. So, “reactionary” is probably the more accurate term, it’s just one that isn’t used because it’s acquired kind of a bad rap.