Posted on 07/20/2024 3:25:24 AM PDT by Phoenix8
…But as the 2024 Republican National Convention in the garrison state of downtown Milwaukee winds down, a more definitive transformation of the Trumpist creed is under way, chiefly in the selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate.
Trump’s own listless, meandering, and astoundingly long acceptance speech on the convention’s last night only made it all the more clear that the MAGA torch is being passed to a more focused and clear-eyed generation of ideologues, with Vance as their de facto leader. But the party’s fulsome embrace of a blood-and-soil brand of economic nationalism, as epitomized by Vance’s speech before the convention on Wednesday, shows that it’s Pat Buchanan who is the ideological forefather of the 21st-century Republican Party.
Buchanan, of course, was the former Nixon speechwriter who harnessed the restive white-nationalist animal spirits of the conservative movement for his insurgent presidential campaigns in 1992 and ’96. Among other things, Buchanan’s presidential runs launched the culture wars, as both an expression and an organizing principle of conservative mass politics. His fiery denunciations of waves of corporate downsizing at the behest of the financial industry presaged the Trump GOP’s mythical, but tirelessly promoted, alignment with the interests of the white working class. Even his paleocon broadsides against the Israel lobby looked ahead to the open America First sympathies of the Trump movement leadership. For all the reservoirs of digital ink spilled on the hallowed self-made origins of Vance’s unique American success story, the Hillbilly Elegy author is plainly the spiritual offspring of the Buchanan movement.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
Pat was the most PRESCIENT commentator of the 20th century
Maybe. I would not want to choose between him and Samuel Francis.
The comments on this being Ross Perot’s party not Pat’s are spot on.
As of now, the gop still wants endless spending and rewarding woke multinational corporations with generous benefits in America. Throw in that new NAFTA did nothing to help prevent illegal immigration via Mexico. Corporate gop still dominates, and we see it dripping out with rumors of citizenship for foreigners by graduating here.
Pat isn’t and in actuality never was. Pat Buchanan was and is merely a loud mouthed political gadfly
True. You couldn’t really run on such a conservative social platform at this point, the average American is too far gone.
Great points. You should post them on the Nation’s website too.
“I have referd to myself as Buchanan republican the last 25 years. when asked to explain my conservatism... The republican party took a wrong direction after Regan left office.”
Absolutely right. If Republican voters had voted in Buchanan rather than G.H.W. Bush, we could have stayed on the conservative course that Reagan had set us on.
I remember calling someone in his campaign because I was interested in it.
A couple of days later the state GOP chairman called me to dissuade me of being interested in it.
What a better world we would be in today had we followed the Buchanan philosophy.
Maybe we would have avoided a forever war or two.
An invasion of hostiles from all over the world through nonexistent borders.
Crazy high apocalyptic inflation that may sink us.
We might have avoided the reigns of Obama and Brandon.
Maybe we might have avoided the complete takeover of media and education by communists.
And on and on.
How did they so effectively negate the Buchanan movement and world-view?
Called him a Nazi for opposing forever wars and the military-industrial complex of the Bushes.
It was an outrageous falsehood, perpetrated, as he said, "to poison debate". Which it did.
He was unjustly labeled because he was neither RINO, Rat, nor communist.
He was actually super brave and protoMAGA, and he was and is a great American.
“Trump’s own listless, meandering, and astoundingly long acceptance speech” A bit long, but it needed to be. I thought it was one of the best speeches I ever heard, period. It was written from the heart, and was for all Americans.
“Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler. He was formerly editor of The Baffler and The New Republic, and is the author, most recently, of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream (Melville House, 2016).” This guy sounds like he was one of the Hussein Obama shoe shiners.
Well, there was (is) an ongoing a conflict in conservative movement between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives.
The neoconservatives (Gingrich, Bushes) were in charge for a while.
Now, it seems that the paleoconservatives (Buchanan) are having upper hand. Will see for how long?!
Neocon is now a slur in some circles.
But, the party seems getting unified, even Newt is supporting Trump now.
*Buchanan was the Moses of MAGA.-DeplorablePaul* VERY GOOD!
*What I remember of Pat Buchanan he was anti-war.*
What I remember is Tony Brown black ‘intellectual’ on his PBS show calling him a racist.
*The Democrat party is Stalin’s party now*
Doesn’t work. Most leftist never heard of him.
They say it like it’s a bad thing
Man.
Maybe getting shot in the ear and miraculously avoiding instant death by assassin might take some stuffing out of you for a week or so.
But it DID NOT to President Trump!
His delivery was pretty much the same as all the rallies.
Pretty much his speaking style since he was 30.
I imagine (sadly) that he is not in great shape, because I don’t believe he has been seen publicly for a long time. But I would love to be wrong about that.
I was a Buchanan delegate to district caucus (or convention) for my trouble, I was audited by Clinton’s IRS for a year I made $17000 and was divorced.
Your comments are far better than the noisome editorial from the Nation.
Tariffs are an important topic. Perhaps tariff wars started the depression. Many policies from FDR kept it going. Our early history featured tariffs, and no depression.
Tariffs are a source of government revenue. It’s a tax, ultimately passed on to consumers. Like all taxes, and inflation, it’s bad. Adam Smith recommended many sources of tax revenue. I think the idea was that if you taxed one thing too much it would prove counter productive. The solution is not to tax everything too much! We should reduce spending and most tax rates should be reduced and enact modest tariffs. I think President Trump simply did not like a bad deal where others enacted sky-high tariffs and we enacted none.
We need a manufacturing base for reasons of national security. We need defense manufacturers, a broader base that can be mobilized, and suppliers. We need to grow some of our own food, produce petroleum products, pharmaceuticals, etc. A MODEST level of tariffs makes sense for the US and other nations as well.
Having some manufacturing is good for social harmony. Not everyone wants to hit the books in high school and beyond. A mix of job types is good for a people with diverse skills. A people with diverse skills is good for the nation.
Buchanan was an eyewitness to the Silent Coup that took out Nixon and installed Deep State Swiss Army knife and Warren Commissioner Gerry Ford and his chief of staff Rockefeller Republican Tricky Dicky Cheney not to mention Rocky himself as the VP which Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore attempted to make President.
Buchanan was ahead of the curve on his contempt and distrust of the Bush Crime Family.
Daddy Bush’s career path didn’t sit well Pat.
I mentioned Silent Coup which can be found on Internet Archive and is very much worth a read although excellently researched, it is light on connecting the dots of the big picture which was undoubtedly a Deep State move to oust Nixon.
The day Pat Buchanan announced his Independent run for President he was speaking in Warren, Michigan. I went to the speech with my daughter who was about 8 years old. As we were driving, I was telling her about our two major political parties and how he was not part of either of them. I asked if she knew the names of the two parties?
“Umm, Republicans and Communists?”
Man, I raised smart kids.
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