Posted on 07/14/2016 5:52:55 PM PDT by Kaslin
The rise of Donald Trump baffled many Republicans. His appeal to the part of the Republican Party that GOP leaders treat with kitchen gloves and a face mask — the voters that poke and prod candidates to death with their ever more stringent question: "Is he a conservative? A true conservative?" — seemed inexplicable. And how could a campaign run on the same nationalist themes that animated the unsuccessful Pat Buchanan campaign 20 years ago suddenly have so much force and life? Instead of talking about the interest of job-creators, the presumptive Republican nominee is talking about interest in jobs, full stop. Instead of castigating 47 percent of the country as "takers," he is advertising his paternalistic instincts to "take care" of the nation's people. The party that fought unions to pass NAFTA now is led by a free-trade skeptic.
What happened?
There are a lot of answers. First, there's always been a large section of the Republican Party that had very little knowledge or interest in conservative ideas and ideology. Second, the dropping financial and psychological costs of migration for the migrants themselves mean that questions about immigration, membership in society, and borders will begin to re-order politics around the globe in the same the way trade and open sea lanes reoriented them during the industrial revolution. Third, it did always seem odd that American politics did not have a more nationalist edge, which one analyst back in the Buchanan campaign believed could change American politics.
But perhaps American nationalism wasn't hidden away after Buchanan wore a hard-hat in New Hampshire. In fact, looking back, there were signs everywhere of it getting ready to burst out.
Just look at conservative literature. Ann Coulter's immigration-restrictionist book Adios America has been credited with altering American politics after it crossed by Donald Trump's eyes. But it had precursors.
During the Bush years, a diverse group of right-leaning writers and thinkers began sounding an alarm about what mass immigration meant for the rest of the country. Many of them emerged from California, exactly where migration's transformational effects were first known. They remembered the 1960s and '70s version of the state, when it seemed like an egalitarian and middle-class utopia, each family in a pleasant bungalow and a school system that was the envy of the world. This paradise was upended by mass immigration and galloping inequalities. And its inheritors were hungry for someone, anyone, to put into words what they were feeling.
Along came Victor David Hanson and his 2003 book Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, which posited that Mexicans fled the dysfunctional statism of Mexico but ended up recreating it in California. Another California writer, Steve Sailer, wrote blog items and articles that seemed to exercise a kind of subliminal influence across much of the right in that decade. One could detect his influence even in the places where his controversial writing on race was decidedly unwelcome. Another Californian writer, Mickey Kaus, became one of the few centrist to liberal-leaning opponents of lax immigration.
There were also national pundits like Michelle Malkin, who put a national security spin on the issue in her 2002 book Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, And Other Foreign Menaces To Our Shores. And there were policy wonks like Mark Krikorian, who is president for the Center for Immigration Studies and wrote The New Case Against Immigration Both Legal and Illegal in 2006.
Popular political titles like these found a large, hungry audience — and upended national politics. They drove conservative activists to shut down the congressional switchboards when President Bush tried to pass comprehensive immigration reform in his second term. They drove the founding of the militia group the Minutemen. And they drove the somewhat radical congressional candidacy of Randy Graf in Arizona.
The truth was, the great wave of migration America experienced from the early '90s to the middle of last decade was a history-shaping event with long-term consequences. But because it was hardly debated by official Washington, the passions it generated tended to find sensationalistic or conspiratorial outlets.
And immigration went hand in hand with anxiety about American jobs and sovereignty. There was a minor nationalist panic during the Bush presidency, with conspiracies floating around that North American governments would create a common currency, the Amero, in imitation of the European Union. Pictures of the currency still float around the internet today. They came with the theory that America would stave off bankruptcy by uniting itself with Canada's natural resources and Mexico's underpaid labor. With that done, an enormous new transportation network would spread across the map like a squid, the NAFTA superhighway system. The rumors were fueled by quixotic lobbying dreams. But the opposition was real and fierce, and it eventually took down the very real Trans-Texas Corridor project with it.
In other words, there were signs of an emerging Trumpism on the right for years. These political tremors were ignored during the Bush years as the GOP immolated itself on foreign policy. And so no one wanted to believe an earthquake like this was coming.
Editor's note: A previous version of this article misstated a book's publication date. It has since been corrected. We regret the error.
Still waiting to see those “High Paying, Better Jobs” NAFTA was going to produce.
So do millions
Oh No
MBD rises from the grave to bloviate
You’ve got an elite class in Washington DC that has basically constructed an Elysium on earth for themselves. They’re getting paid megabucks from every direction. They don’t feel that they have anything in common with ordinary Americans.
In fact, they despise ordinary Americans, and think the world would be a lot better off without us. They think they can let Islam do the dirty work of getting rid of us, and that they’ll somehow emerge unscathed, or at least with acceptable losses.
It’s self-hate by proxy.
+1
The rise of Trump only comes as a surprise to the uninformed or those feigning ignorance for political purposes.
bump
And during all these years the One Worlders have been in the public schools teaching our children to hate America and God.
there down in Mexico wages for truck drivers sky rocketed after Nafta instead of being paid 25 dollars a day they were paid 75 dollars.
Right, they're called the GOP-E and the Republican Party "leaderhip."
Those of us out here in flyover country that have been ignored for DECADES remember what Conservatism is, and the Republican Party hasn't been it since Ronald Reagan.
Let’s give Laura Ingraham her due. She has been rock solid especially since the Gang of Eight fiasco.
The people of the US have largely opposed all the moves toward globalism. It’s simply that there were enough bought a paid for politicians to pass whatever legislation their puppet masters desired.
Around 60% of Americans opposed NAFTA, and 60% and more have opposed our immigration policies for at least thirty years, and also other trade arrangements that have been adopted since NAFTA.
Opposition by the public has always been there. And Trump is the first person to enter politics with enough determination and guts to effectively challenge the status quo of the past thirty or more years. Pat Buchanan had some success, but just wasn’t a big enough personality to overcome the opposition.
“Trumpism” = Nationalism. the most dreaded “-ism” of all to the globalist left and right.
Washington hasn’t paid attention to what Middle America cares about since Reagan. Imagine, the guy who convinces people he genuinely will listen to them is popular.
The same folks forget that many Americans have been buying guns and ammo to arm themselves and in reality be ready to get rid of the Muslims instead.
There in Mexico. Instead of Mexicans making 25 Cents an dhour there making 3.50 an hour. Thats a good paying job. High paying compaired to what they used to make. We in the US have the 25 cent jobs. Not really. they stayed in Mexico to. We have no jobs.
Really simple, no links or footnotes needed.
You know the old joke about the poor Irish family getting unexpected company for dinner?
The kids expected some of the meat but were told “take a potato and wait”. “Take a potato and wait” No meat, just “take a potato and wait”.....
When dessert arrived the kids were told “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”
I believe it’s called “Sucker punched” and Americans of all stripes are damned sick and tired of taking a potato and waiting.
All the Republicans we sent to DC to do the right thing and we get told take a potato and wait.
Enough. Trump the Hunter is bringing meat, screw the potatoes.
Ross Perot. Just sayin'....
Perot was right about NAFTA, the National Debt and so much more. Ahead of his time.
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