Posted on 02/12/2021 7:06:32 AM PST by Kaslin
It has been a dreadful three months for the Grand Old Party.
On Nov. 3, President Donald Trump seemed to have lost the White House by narrowly losing three crucial blue states he had won in 2016 -- Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania -- and Georgia and Arizona as well.
Trump immediately mounted an acrimonious two-month campaign to prove the election had been "rigged" and "stolen," enlisting virtually the entire party behind his claim.
On Jan. 5, after an intra-party battle between Trump and the Georgia Republican leadership, the GOP lost both of Georgia's Senate seats and control of the U.S. Senate.
On Jan. 6, a mob, after storming the Capitol to block a formal vote to confirm the election of Joe Biden as president, rampaged through the building for hours.
On Jan. 13, Trump was impeached by Speaker Nancy Pelosi's House for "incitation of insurrection."
The trial began Tuesday, featuring endless reruns of footage from the Jan. 6 occupation, showing thugs invading and trashing the Capitol and searching out Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump's defense: He directed the crowd on the mall to march to the Capitol "peacefully" not violently, and the White House was unaware there might be a mob assault.
In the month since the attack on the Capitol, says The New York Times, 140,000 Republicans in 25 states have renounced their party by changing their registration. And Joe Biden's approval rating has been in the 50s, a level Trump did not reach in four years.
There may have been a worse 90 days in Republican Party history, but it is difficult to recall exactly when.
There was the Goldwater defeat of 1964, which left the party with less than 40% of the presidential vote and less than a third of the seats in the House and Senate.
There was the Watergate year 1974, which saw Richard Nixon resign in August and the party loses 49 House seats that fall and then lose the presidency to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Yet, the years following these political disasters were not all that bad.
Goldwater's defeat was followed by the Nixon-led comeback in 1966, with the party picking up 47 seats and then recapturing the White House in 1968. And while Watergate was followed by the loss of Nixon's successor Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter's presidency opened the door to the winningest Republican of them all, Ronald Reagan.
In short, it is not always true as Sen. John McCain mordantly observed, that the darkest hour is often just before it turns totally black.
What are the prerequisites for a Republican restoration?
As Nixon's victory in 1968 and Reagan's in 1980 showed, a party comeback requires, first, the perceived failure of the opposition on issues of major concern to the great majority.
In 1968, LBJ's Great Society program had ushered in five summers of race riots, soaring crime rates, a social and cultural revolution on the campuses, and a war in Southeast Asia that was consuming 200 to 300 American lives a week.
Under Carter in 1980, there were 21% interest rates, 13% inflation, 7% unemployment, and 52 U.S. hostages being held in Iran.
A second and indispensable element of a party comeback is party unity, which Nixon and Reagan produced, as Eisenhower had before them.
Whether the GOP will be united in 2022 or 2024 depends, very much today, on one man.
Still, as of today, though Biden appears personally popular, he seems to be moving leftward in a way that will play into the GOP's hands-on several issues.
Shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, is a policy decision that will kill thousands of jobs to prevent an "existential crisis" millions of workers do not see.
Second, Biden has moved the racial goalposts from equality of opportunity to "equity" for all, which can only be attained by socialist action to even out incomes and wealth through quotas, affirmative action, and set-asides. Yet, voters in ultra-liberal California last fall crushed Prop 16, which would have empowered public agencies, universities, and colleges to consider race, gender, and ethnicity when making decisions on contracting, hiring, and student admissions.
Moreover, the liberal immigration policy Biden promised last fall has already caused a stampede to our Southern border. Some 78,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended by the Border Patrol crossing in January alone. They are now being caught at the rate of 3,000 a day.
Securing the border is a populist and national security issue.
Other Trump add-ons to the traditional GOP agenda remain popular with large majorities of Americans.
Consider the "America first" issues of economic nationalism, the return of manufacturing to the United States, and keeping U.S. troops out of foreign wars where no vital U.S. interests are imperiled.
The questions of the hour are these: Will the GOP be united against an incumbent party that is moving visibly leftward and dragging the country with it -- and what will Donald Trump do?
pufff
It was Stolen. PERIOD!
Nothing papers over that.
“The questions of the hour are these: Will the GOP be united against an incumbent party that is moving visibly leftward and dragging the country with it — and what will Donald Trump do?”
Well, one of those is easy to answer, most of the GOP will unite to assist the Dems in their rape of America.
What will Trump do? Don’t know, but he does have options.
“Trump immediately mounted an acrimonious two-month campaign to prove the election had been “rigged” and “stolen,” enlisting VIRTUALLY THE ENTIRE PARTY behind his claim. “
I think Pat forgot his meds when he wrote this.
I love Buchanan but this weak writing isn’t typical of him. Pat staying in his lane because of the cancel culture? Hope not.
He must have.
Pat Buchanan was and still is a Loser.
Was and Is on the Wrong Team.
“””Trump immediately mounted an acrimonious two-month campaign to prove the election had been “rigged” and “stolen,” enlisting virtually the entire party behind his claim.”””
I did not need to read beyond this sentence to know that Pat Buchanan is full of it.
“””enlisting virtually the entire party behind his claim”””
Sorry, Buchanan but I do not know where you come up with such an idiotic statement.
The reality as seen by America is that virtually the entire GOP did all they could to thwart any investigation into the obvious voter fraud.
Yesterday, a FReeper was complaining that the moderators were blocking Pat Buchanan commentaries. This is why Buchanan is a scumbag.
“Trump immediately mounted an acrimonious two-month campaign to prove the election had been “rigged” and “stolen,” enlisting VIRTUALLY THE ENTIRE PARTY behind his claim.”
Besides Pat living on a planet other than Earth, the vast majority of Republicans looked at the Democrat cheating as a way to rid the party of Trump and get things ‘back to normal’.
Only now are they realizing that 90% of their voters prefer Trump over them and so without Trump, their chances of holding high office are about as high as the Libertarians.
They’re also realizing that the Dems and the Media played them as USEFUL IDIOTS and now that they are no longer needed, they’re throwing them to the wolves, as we see with their recent treatment of the GOP Gay Mafia (some people call it by another name, The Lincoln Project).
He sure had NAFTA/GATT/WTO wrong. And what about those endless wars?
He was an active part of the problem and an opponent to the solution.
What planet is Pat Buchanan living on?
If he had been specific and said "enlisting virtually the entire electorate who voted for him behind his claim" that might have been more accurate.
But his own dissembling and corrupt party actively and passively stabbed him in the back and sabotaged him, or cravenly put their heads back down into some hole they dug to hide in.
Not to mention his scare quotes "rigged" and "stolen" which HE put in his article, I am certain, not added by an editor.
I have no use for Pat Buchanan.
When he isn't a stopped clock being right twice a day, he is off in his own world.
“
Moreover, the liberal immigration policy Biden promised last fall has already caused a stampede to our Southern border. Some 78,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended by the Border Patrol crossing in January alone. They are now being caught at the rate of 3,000 a day.
Securing the border is a populist and national security issue.”
Why can’t the border States defend, protect or secure the border?
Someone fell me Why Not?
Well he’s 82, and probably forgets a lot. My husband will be 83 in April and doesn’t even remember how to use the microwave, So what does that tell you?
Grand Old Pussies
Republican leadership demonstrated repeatedly that they were complicit with this fraud... millions were disgusted beyond belief. If President Trump announces that he is forming a new party... 90% or more will follow him along with a good percentage of "traditional" Democrats. The Republican Party is in deep trouble.
Pat is in his 80s, many can keep their faculties intact until this age. It is sad that Buchanan is now either letting a ghost writer pen his pieces or he has mental acuity has become diminished. He either has no understanding of what is actually going on or he is trying to spin things.
Pat you still ain’t the one
“Pat Buchanan was and still is a Loser. Was and Is on the Wrong Team.”
I’m not sure that was always the case, but he certainly had the worst timing. He saw the damage done by open borders and free trade...but at the time, the GOP was fighting unions, so a lot of us had no problem with throwing union workers out of work, since they virtually bank-rolled the Democrats back then, plus their elected leaders simply hated their country.
But at this point, we’re now have to deal with losing our power over half of the globe to China, as they zoom by us economically and militarily...while we’re sending trannies to the front lines and forcing companies to hire EEOC types to design and produce our hardware. China SHOULD have been held back, at least until they ridded themselves of Communism...but neither party would do that, although Pat did warn of what was coming if we kept on the same path.
“It has been a dreadful three months for the Grand Old Party.”
Let’s say it’s been a dreadful three months for the Grand Old Party as it’s presently constituted, and let’s say that’s not a bad thing.
When something is being reshaped it usually doesn’t look pretty during the reshaping.
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