Posted on 02/04/2016 8:43:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Donald Trump's performance in this year's Iowa caucuses was identical to Pat Buchanan's in 1996: second place, enjoying the support of approximately one in four Republican caucus-goers. Trump's campaign, like Buchanan's, is powered by the resentment and anxiety of the white working class.
Trump is this year's celebrity mascot for the Buchanan boys.
The Buchanan boys are economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency. So they construct for themselves a story in which they have been victimized by elites and a political system based on interest-group politics that serves everyone except them. Trump is supported by so-called white nationalists, as Buchanan was before him, but the swastika set is merely an extreme example of the sort of thinking commonly found among those to whom Trump appeals.
If you want to understand the patron-client model behind the appeal of a man such as Pat Buchanan, then begin by consulting one of the keenest political minds of our time: Pat Buchanan. In a memo to Richard Nixon, he sketched out his model: "There is a legitimate grievance in my view of white working-class people that every time, on every issue, that the black militants loud-mouth it, we come up with more money. . . . If we can give 50 Phantoms to the Jews, and a multi-billion dollar welfare program for the blacks . . . why not help the Catholics save their collapsing school system?"
The Jews Buchanan is writing about here presumably were those in Jerusalem rather than those in Brooklyn, but the conflation of overseas national-security projects with domestic interest-group politics is hardly restricted to self-conscious white nationalists. Bernie Sanders complains that money spent overseas ought to be spent servicing his constituents' interests at home, and Trump dreams of turning our foreign adventures into a profit-making scheme, looting oil and other assets from foreigners to fund the British-style socialist health-care system of his dreams.
The European counterparts to Trump and Buchanan are much more forthright about being welfare statists, the marriage of xenophobic identity politics and an expansive welfare state being more familiar to Germans (and Europeans whose countries were occupied by Germans) than it is to New England fishermen or petroleum engineers in Texas. But the tariffs and trade restrictions that Trump dreams of are simply a very large tax on one group of Americans that would be used to provide economic benefits for other Americans. It is an odd line of thinking: If the government levies a tax on your neighbors in order to fund an earned-income tax credit for your family, then you're a welfare queen; if the government levies a tax on businesses that is passed on to your neighbors in order to subsidize your earned income through higher prices, then that's economic nationalism.
If our economic elites were really as good at juking public policy for their own interests as they're thought to be, they might support that. Under the current system, they're the ones who pay most of the taxes. Under a Trumpkin tariff, economic benefits (to the extent that any were realized, which might very well be not at all) would be paid for by people who shop at Walmart. Automotive tariffs are a much larger burden on people who are shopping for economy cars than they are for people buying $90,000 European sedans.
There is some irony in the economics. The Buchananite vision would make most Americans worse off, with any increase in nominal money incomes being more than offset by an increase in prices. This is the opposite of the economics of immigration, which lowers prices and thereby raises Americans' real incomes, even when nominal money incomes are stagnant or declining. Or so immigration activists tell us: The reality is that this immigration effect holds true only for the incomes of native-born Americans, excluding current immigrants, who constitute about 15 percent of the population. Include them in your numbers and the studies generally cited in service of the claim that immigration increases real incomes show the opposite.
Conventional conservatives are generally in favor of free(r) trade and hold mixed views on immigration, which is not entirely an economic matter. And they are perfectly happy (eager, really) to subsidize Buchanan's hypothetical Irish Catholics who wish to send their children to private schools -- just as they are happy to do the same for black families in Philadelphia and the District of Columbia. And that is the sticking point: American conservatives are rooted in classical liberalism, and their political philosophy is universalist: free enterprise and the rule of law for everyone. The jackbootier elements among the Buchanan boys demand the explicit servicing of white interests as such. (Never mind, for the moment, the argument from our progressive friends that conservative universalism is the servicing of white interests as such, inexplicitly.) Whether that leap lands you on so-called economic nationalism or explicit racism, it's the same leap.
There are all sorts of ways to draw the line between Us and Them. Sometimes it's Us vs. Them Foreigners, and sometimes it's Us vs. Them Jews, as in Buchanan's unfortunate memo. Conservatives should continue to appeal to these voters, addressing the better angels of their nature with policy solutions to their problems, which are not imaginary. Confronting the stupidity and snobbery that holds in contempt those Americans who do work that does not require a university degree would be welcome, too, and Marco Rubio was well-advised to do so in his disquisition on welders and philosophers.
But it is unlikely that such voters can ever be entirely assimilated into the mainstream of American conservatism, the universalism of which provides them no Them -- and they want a Them, badly. Some Republicans might finesse this to an extent, for example through all that risible ritual denunciation of "the establishment," Ted Cruz and his "Washington cartel," "Wall Street insiders," etc. But that is not going to satisfy those who hunger for a fully expressed white identity politics, and we should expect that the occasional lunatic (Ross Perot), true believer (Pat Buchanan) or con artist (Donald Trump) periodically will find ways to tap into that energy. There's a ceiling on that vote, but the numbers aren't trivial.
-- Kevin D. Williamson is roving correspondent at National Review.
The National Review calls American Middle Class Tax Slaves “racist” for the 400th time for refusing to support open borders. So surprised!
What a jackass. Trump's main appeal to me was him shining a spotlight on H-1B abuses. I do not wish to be supported by the federal government, but I also do not want a federal government complicit in looking the other way as companies abuse this program to put American IT workers on the streets. And thankfully Trump's stance forced Cruz to re-evaluate his, as that was the main problem I had with Cruz.
What I got out of the article was immigration lowered actual wages, so it wasn’t exactly pro-immigration.
The opposite, in fact.
In before the first 'his uncle fell out of a watchtower at Auschwitz' canard.
Another Trump hit piece from a once-great magazine by an always pathetic piece of ordure.
Why can’t he say that Cruz is one of the Huckabee, Santorum boys?
This is getting ripped to shreds in the NR comments section.
Read the article linked. It’s actually AGAINST low-skill, low-income immigration.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416942/there-shortage-poor-people-kevin-d-williamson
Williamson is a disgrace. NR favors open borders and amnesty. Both parties have abandoned the American worker.
Williamson is a among the best political writers out there, of any political stripe. His prose is just brilliant.
He’s also a cuck who fails to understand that the involuntarily demographic transformation of America is an existential threat, not only to every single principle espoused by the National Review, “movement” conservatism, and indeed America herself.
You said...
“What I got out of the article was immigration lowered actual wages, so it wasn’t exactly pro-immigration.
The opposite, in fact.”
Unless I misread it, that’s what I got out of it, also
“The Buchanan boys are economically and socially frustrated white men “
..who our GOPe overlords are happily replacing with immigrants from the Third World.
Wow, what a condescending article.
This guy is basically saying to the American middle class:
"SCREW YOU!"
You missed Santorum endorsing Rubio? And Trey Gowdy doing it a month earlier? There’s your GOP-e boys.
Oddly, I think Christie throws to Cruz when he exits. He’s the sanest of the marginal candidates, not counting the photo with zero.
National Review seems to be parroting the GOPe’s contempt for its conservative base.
“NR favors open borders and amnesty. Both parties have abandoned the American worker.”
which is exactly why I dropped my subscription long ago.
Why? It’s the National Review. No need to read it beyond it’s initial insult to my demographic.
It is legal immigration more than illegal immigration that is destroying the American worker and depressing wages. Why are we bringing in 1.1 million legal permanent immigrants a year along with 640,000 guest workers annually when we have the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years. The immigrants are taking all the jobs while the native born are shut out. We have a surplus of labor.
I concur.
The mass immigration is designed to keep poor people poor and dependent on the Government — chiefly Appalachian Whites and blacks.
It’s so the blacks stay on the Democrat plantation and the RNC Elite get their lawns cut cheap and prompt service at the country club.
How an Obscure Adviser to Pat Buchanan Predicted the Wild Trump Campaign in 1996
The Week dot com ^ | Michael Brendan Dougherty
Posted on 1/20/2016, 2:17:11 AM by WayneLusvardi
Imagine giving this advice to a Republican presidential candidate: What if you stopped calling yourself a conservative and instead just promised to make America great again?
What if you dropped all this leftover 19th-century piety about the free market and promised to fight the elites who were selling out American jobs?
What if you just stopped talking about reforming Medicare and Social Security and instead said that the elites were failing to deliver better healthcare at a reasonable price?
What if, instead of vainly talking about restoring the place of religion in society something that appeals only to a narrow slice of Middle America. You simply promised to restore the Middle American core, the economic and cultural losers of globalization to their rightful place in America?
What if you said you would re store them as the chief clients of the American state under your watch, being mindful of their interests when regulating the economy or negotiating trade deals?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3385923/posts
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