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.
Well no suprise NRO joins the “Unless you agree with me you are racist” clown posse of the Establishment media.
Umm NO, what we are saying is , as we said in 1980, “You have destroyed everything you have touched. Our country is worse off in every way then it was 10 years ago. Be gone you DC “politics as usual” whores. You have your chance and you failed, completely.”
This Politics of Failure Caucas, can go away while once again, the American People step in to fix the mess of everything the politically correct DC Political/Media/Business class created.
Go back further in history and see that demagoguery has often tapped into the fears and anger of those who feel helpless in trying times.
“Why? It’s the National Review. No need to read it beyond it’s initial insult to my demographic.”
Personally, I read the underlying article to have hard facts and statistics to fight the open borders idiots.
I’m Orthodox Jewish. I get sneered at and insulted getting on the subway (and that’s just the Reform Jews). It rolls off my back. I’m used to insulting tones.
Christie would be “allowed” to endorse Cruz even if he were inclined to do so.
Brings back memories of the Pat Buchanan flame wars here. Might have been the first in history on FR.
>> the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years.
No mystery there or need to blame legal immigrants: some folks won’t work if they get enough to survive.
'And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'
Immigrants, legal and illegal, use the welfare system to a greater extent than the native born. We are importing poverty.
Immigrants vote Dem more than two to one. They are changing the electoral map placing the Dems on the road to being the permanent majority party. Keeping the status quo on legal immigration will ensure that happens.
Our birthrates without immigration are too low. Immigration, legal, is necessary for the economy.
What we have is too many incentives for people not to work for a living.
That's what I want to see.
However, we need to have some conscience exemptions for newly imposed laws, such as pro-abortion laws, "anti-Muslim hate speech" laws, imposition of "gay marriage" or "transgenderism," etc. These things were not part of the Founders' design and are being imposed against all moral and ethical foundations. Many of the Founders were not Christians but were deists; however, they were still running on the vapors of Greco-Romano, Judeo-Christian morality and laws.
That has been lost, but the Constitution was based on it, so there needs to be protection for people who are part of that foundational viewpoint.
I don't think anybody is capable of restoring it, unfortunately, especially now that we have an ignorant leftist freak in the Vatican.
Worker productivity and automation offsets that need. And more thought needs to in that area. You think uber and such is messing up taxi drivers, just wait to truckers are out of work in ten to twenty years here, etc, etc.
Pure BS. We have the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years. Our immigration policies don't bring in the best and brightest. If we had a labor shortage, wages would be going up, not down. We don't need mass immigration to boost our population numbers.
Given the numbers and composition of the legal immigrants we bring in, 87% are minorities as defined by the USG, we are rapidly changing the demographics of the country from predominantly non-Hispanic whites to predominantly minorities. By 2043 half of the population will be non-Hispanic white compared to 63% today and 89% in 1970. From the Census Bureau:
The U.S. is projected to become a majority-minority nation for the first time in 2043. While the non-Hispanic white population will remain the largest single group, no group will make up a majority.
All in all, minorities, now 37 percent of the U.S. population, are projected to comprise 57 percent of the population in 2060. (Minorities consist of all but the single-race, non-Hispanic white population.) The total minority population would more than double, from 116.2 million to 241.3 million over the period.
The nation’s total population would cross the 400 million mark in 2051, reaching 420.3 million in 2060.
What we have is too many incentives for people not to work for a living.
No, we don't have a shortage of workers, we have a shortage of jobs.
Government data collected in December 2014 show 18 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the United States who arrived in January 2000 or later. But only 9.3 million jobs were added over this time period. In addition, the native-born population 16 and older grew by 25.2 million. Because job growth has not come close to matching immigration and population growth, the share of Americans in the labor force has declined dramatically — a clear indication there is no labor shortage. Despite this, Congress is considering proposals to increase legal immigration even further; and during the last Congress the Senate actually passed the Schumer-Rubio bill (S.744), which would have doubled legal immigration and legalized illegal immigrants.1 Congress's disregard for the absorption capacity of the U.S. labor market has profound consequences for American workers.
80% of LEGAL immigrants vote democrat. Almost all immigrants from the Middle East are on welfare. Don’t know where you get your info by LEGAL immigrants use more welfare than native born Americans.
Thanks for all the graphs.....these alienists have no understanding of what the reality of LEGAL immigration is doing to the USA....none.
Check the birth rates.
So if you support tariffs, lower immigration, and worry about the negative affects of foreigners, you are a neo-Nazi? Evidently, the Federalist Party were the first Nazis.
Cruz voted TWICE against funding Veterans healths issues. Ted Cruz voted against providing $27 million for the Veterans Health Administration.....
http://correctrecord.org/the-gop-on-veterans-issues/
RE: So if you support tariffs, lower immigration, and worry about the negative affects of foreigners, you are a neo-Nazi?
Where in the article did it mention the Nazis?
Looks like Godwin’s Law has been proven once again.
RE: Cruz voted TWICE against funding Veterans healths issues. Ted Cruz voted against providing $27 million for the Veterans Health Administration.....
Therefore, what follows? We conclude from that that he’s again healthcare for Veterans?
“Therefore, what follows? We conclude from that that he’s again healthcare for Veterans?”
You said it, not me.
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