No, the GOP is not reactionary. The American people are rather evenly split on gun control, same-sex marriage, abortion, support of labor, the recent healthcare reforms, and the choice between the deficit and the recovery, and the major parties reflect these differences. On the other hand, the contemporary role of the federal government—protecting people and the environment through regulation; promoting free trade; supplying welfare in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other services; maintaining a worldwide military presence; providing funding for agriculture, science, and culture; and levying the taxes to pay for it all—isn't a subject of serious dispute between the major parties, in spite of the quibbling over the details of the taxes and spending that would seem to suggest the contrary. When put in a sufficiently general context, American politics is actually fairly uniform.
To encounter reactionary politics in the United States, you really have to go to the Constitution Party, which (if it had the chance) would abolish federal taxation (and by implication most of the federal government), establish protectionist policies, repeal the various civil rights acts of the 1960s, and reinstate sodomy laws—in essence, bring back government as it was prior to the Great Depression.
