Posted on 12/24/2020 11:07:28 AM PST by RandFan
Denouncing the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill as a parsimonious "disgrace" and hinting at an Alamo-style finish on Jan. 6, when Congress votes to declare Joe Biden the next president, Donald Trump is not going to go quietly.
The anti-Trumpers and "Never Trumpers" celebrating at Christmas 2020, in this "dark winter" of Joe Biden's depiction, are assuring each other that Trumpism and Trump are dead and gone for good in four weeks.
The future of the GOP, they suggest, belongs to the Republicans who resisted and renounced Trump through the last five years of his candidacy and presidency.
As for those cowards and collaborators who stood by Trump and refused to repudiate him, they will, in turn, be repudiated by history and the American electorate alike.
The wish, here, is very much the father to the thought.
For if the past is any guide, not only are the reports of the death of Trumpism premature, the probability is that Trumpism has put down roots in our national politics that are not soon, if ever, going to be pulled up.
For those of us of a certain age, a comparable situation arose at Christmas 1964. Barry Goldwater had just been crushed in a 44-state landslide, winning the votes of only 27 million Americans. The senator had carried only five states of the Deep South and his home state of Arizona.
The establishment saw in the crushing of Goldwater the defeat and rout of the "extremist" movement that had produced him. "The Party That Lost Its Head" was the title of a widely hailed post-election book by two Ripon Society Republicans.
The establishment consensus was that Govs. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, William Scranton of Pennsylvania and George Romney of Michigan were the future of the party, if it was to have a future.
What followed?
Richard Nixon, who had stood by Goldwater when the party's liberal elite abandoned him, would lead the GOP to recapture 47 House seats in 1966, take the presidency in 1968, and run up a 49 state landslide in 1972.
Thus began a period of GOP presidential ascendancy, with Nixon, Reagan and Bush I winning five of six elections from 1968 to 1988, until the first baby boomer president, Bill Clinton, arrived on the scene.
And while there are differences between now and then, there are many similarities.
Do the anti-Trumpers or "Never Trumpers" represent the future of the GOP? If so, where is the postwar precedent for this? No Republican who turned his back on Goldwater was ever nominated for president or vice president following Goldwater's defeat.
When President Gerald Ford put Rockefeller on his ticket after taking over from President Nixon, the Kansas City convention of 1976 demanded Rockefeller's removal as the price of party unity.
Rockefeller was sacrificed, as the right had demanded.
Four years after Ford's defeat, Mr. Conservative himself, Ronald Reagan, Goldwater's most effective surrogate in 1964, was nominated and won successive landslides in 1980 and 1984.
Other factors and forces point to the probability that Trumpism has a major role in the party's future.
Where Presidents Truman, Nixon, and George W. Bush left office with approval ratings in the 20s, Trump's approval rating is still in the 40s, where it has been for the duration of his presidency.
Second, the issues that propelled Trump to the nomination and the Oval Office still resonate with the American people.
Among them are mass migration, insecure borders and dependency upon foreign imports for the necessities of our national life.
Moreover, there is shrinking support for a foreign policy that has us tied down militarily in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East, to fight if need be, in the defense of scores of nations, few of which have a direct bearing on the national security of the United States.
Another issue Trump elevated and exploited that is more acute now than in 2016, is a distrust of the media, the "deep state" and the political, cultural and academic establishments that have alienated the 74 million who voted for Trump.
And if the past is prologue, the Republican Party will make a major comeback in 2022.
Consider. Two years after his smashing victory over Goldwater, LBJ and his party lost 47 House seats. Ronald Reagan, after his landslide in 1980, lost 26 House seats in 1982. After routing Bush I in 1992, Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats and the Senate. Two years after winning the presidency, Barack Obama lost both the House and Senate in 2014.
Is it likely Joe Biden will be celebrating his 80th birthday after making history by leading his party to control of Congress in 2022?
For Republicans, the nomination of 2024 is a prize to be sought.
However, if one has spent the last four years trashing Trump, it may be as out of reach as it was for Rocky.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
Time for another Tea Party II but this time with a litmus test, no RINO’s or Liberals and certainly not most Libertarians to make it fail like what happened to the first Tea Party in America with Ross Perot. Something like a Nationalist Tea Party. The present model is not working. It is broken too badly and cannot be salvaged
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Imo, we must forge a Clsssical Conservative party, tweaked a little by the lessons of history. The Constitution and its Natural Law roots should be the mindset of every American. It resonates in every person of good will looking to do the good because it is objective truth.
Armed thusly, we can defeat the neo-Marxist evil that drives the Dems (and the never Trumpers who were spawned by the Trotskyites) and their Chinese allies
I did also in 1996, the year I repudiated the Republican Party for refusing to even consider a trial in the Senate for Impeached Bill Clinton who freely admitted his guilt. I broke my ties with the Republican Party and have not looked back since. I don't consider Trump to be a Republican so I'm still loyal and true to my commitment.
“He has been pro-Red China tariffs, anti Red China in WTO,”
Correction; Pat Buchanan has CLAIMED to be those things.
Is he sincere? So far he’s failed the litmus test which is Trump support.
In connection with the vote on January 6, President Trump should let Mitch McConnell and all the RINO globalist Chinese corrupted swine know that if his efforts to prove that he won fail, and they allow the biggest fraud ever against the US to be allowed, on Day 1 of his exile from the office he won, he will form a new party, and he will field candidates to run against every Republican who worked against him for the past 4 years. McConnell will find out what a bloodbath looks like in 2 short years, as he becomes the most irrelevant person in the swamp.
Hell no, they’re not the future! The nationalist, populist, conservtive impulse has long represented the base of the GOP. Remember Pat’s 1992 primary showing? Trump is Buchanon with charisma and street smarts.
no.. they are the “deal enders” of the old GOP
sorry, meant to say dead enders
“They are going straight to hell.”
And there’s 80 + million people that would like to help them getting there.
“Everyone hates them.”
Agreed, yes even the lefties hate them. Never Trumpers/RINO’s or whatever you want to call them are traitors. No one likes a traitor.
I absolutely loath Nancy Pelosi, but I do respect the fact that she’s 100% for her party, even though I oppose those beliefs. Now if I were given the choice as to who enters the Gates of Hell first, I’d pick Mitt Romney over Pelosi any day simply because that Never Trumper is a traitor.
Same here.
(digging into this as we speak)
"Wait a minute a woman claims she has audio recording of a (Scott) Koch admitting to picking up Biden ballots from a foreign cargo plane and transporting them to a tabulation center?"
Scott, I’m told (but haven’t personally confirmed), is the Grandson of the infamous “Koch Brothers”.
https://twitter.com/pepesgrandma/status/1342143340075229185
Seem like betrayal that Democrats didn’t use American union labor to print their fake ballots....
Do you even know who Buchanan is? He’s the grandfather of Trumpism.
If you can’t strategically withhold your vote, what exactly do you have to bargain with and why would the party give a sh*t about your demands?
IF the Never Trumpers are correct it spells the death of the GOP
>>>Never Trumpers are the past of the GOP. There is no future for them.<<<
Hard to tell that from Free Republic lately . . . they are running amok here. Sometimes they even make this place look like Democratic Underground North.
>>>“the Republican Party will make a major comeback in 2022”
Come back ? Under Trump it never left. It won two successive landslides.<<<
Trumpism had two successive landslides . . . The GOP just clung to him for the ride.
They are like the snake that talked the guy into carrying him across the river and then bit him on the other side, because that is what he is.
There aren’t enough never-Trumpets in the country to fill a small high school gymnasium.
Those R’s that led the charge against PDJT sealed their political dooms. Nobody was asking slavish support like the DNC does these days, but stabbing your own people in the back is not acceptable conduct.
if perchance the Never Trumpers were to gain control over the R party, the rest of us would NOT vote and NOT support them.
as long as they are just going to keep defending and enabling the DemoCommieNazis.........there’s no point in supporting the GOP=e. We may as well stay home and let the DNC take over... at least it won’t be with our support.
Some of the backstabbing and attacks of Trump have been genuinely disgusting! Romney comes to mind but there have been a couple dozen other really bad ones
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