Posted on 05/16/2005 10:34:50 PM PDT by coffeebreak
Pat Buchanan speaks of American conservatism in the past tense. "The conservative movement has passed into history," says the one-time White House aide, three-time presidential candidate, commentator and magazine publisher. "It doesn't exist anymore as a unifying force," he says in an interview with The Washington Times. "There are still a lot of people who are conservative, but the movement is now broken up, crumbled, dismantled." He is seated in his living room on a sunny afternoon. His wife, Shelley — a member of the Nixon White House staff when he met and married her — is upstairs in their Virginia home.
Mr. Buchanan, a former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, says conservatism "is at war with itself over foreign policy, over deficit hawks versus supply-siders." Unnamed phonies, he suggests, have infiltrated the movement. There are "a lot of people who call themselves conservative but who, on many issues, I just don't consider as conservative. They are big-government people."
Culture under attack Conservatism, by most accounts, has dominated the Republican Party since 1964, when it nominated Barry Goldwater. Mr. Buchanan questions that view. For one thing, he says, Mr. Nixon, who imposed wage and price controls on the nation and outraged conservatives with his historic opening to communist China in 1972, was not a conservative. Nor in his view is President Bush or today's Republican Party. "I was a conservative in the Nixon White House, but there was no question that it was not a conservative White House," he says. "Nixon referred to conservatives as 'they.' He used to ask me, 'What do they want?' One time he said, 'Buchanan, you have to give the nuts 20 percent of what they want.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Agreed - these "forever" pronouncements seem to come every time someone other than you're choice is president. What I don't get is why its so hard for conservatives to flush out bright, good, right-thinking leaders who genuinely like and successfully negotiate with people, like Reagan, but iron willed on important issues.
How can you have free trade with a country that is not free?Free trade is what the various states in this country enjoy among themselves, not what we have with China and other unfree countries. If American consumers can choose what they want at the best price, and Chinese consumers cannot, how is that free trade? The distinction that Pat Buchanan makes between free trade and fair trade is a good distinction to me, and what Milton Friedman teaches is certainly fine on paper, but theory isn't everything. Sometimes the real world doesn't conform to theory as well as it should.
We will be served up the biggest RINO in history in 2006. The Republican Party will never leave the Center. It's downhill from here, Christians are the new Satan of the American landscape. The Crazy Right Wing Christian Conservatives...
If you look back to the Reagan days, you had Reagan the conservative, and more middle of the road candidates like Bush's father. Things aren't so clearcut now. The President has a strong cultural conservative appeal, but he's more of a middle of the roader on things like the size of government.
If you're a convinced budget cutter or free marketeer that combination is far from the ideal, but it looks like it's one that can win elections at the Presidential level. If Bush tried to be on the right in all things, he probably wouldn't have gotten so far.
To get a candidate like Ronald Reagan elected, you need a real problem situation that makes people open to new ideas and changes in how government works. Until then, candidates are not going to take the kind of chances Reagan did in his campaigns.
What? You don't think Pat was looking to unify conservatives when he and Lenora Fulani had their fling?
he is dead right on the economic issues - our party wins elections now on the national security, and moral/ethical/values issue. we have no economic message, none. and that's because of our blind embrace of free trade and open immigration policies. we will never see another 49 state win like Reagan had, the best we can do with this formula is win by 1 or 2 states, even up against northeast liberals like Kerry.
I think you are wrong here. The right candidate can take the illegal immigration issue and run with it to a landslide. Hopefully, that fellow or gal is a conservative republican. But, it could be a conservative democrat.
which leading republican candidate for 2008 is going to say anything like that? same thing on trade - who is going to break ranks - specifically on China? List the leading candidates: senator Allen, Bill Owens, McCain, what is their position on these two issues?
my point is, we are going to run in 2008 on the same two issues - national security & moral issues. now don't get me wrong, those are two good issues to have. But it will, at best, give us another 3-5% win and a 1 or 2 state margin.
>>
Once again Buchanan is wrong. Of all the things that divide conservatives, foreign policy isn't one of them.<<
Being the world's policeman was a Democrat thing... Conservatives where I grew up called Korea and Vietnam "Democrat wars"..a lot of these same folks grew up Democrats because that was the only party in Georgia until Reagan but they still didn't mean it in a good way.
Adoption of Friedman's ideas may have helped reign in inflation but couldn't do a thing about the resulting recession. Only a resumption of Keynesian policy in 1982 brought the economy back into balance. Thank heavens our government noted what was happening across the pond before we, too, went down the loo.
If I recall his "free to choose" statement was made about parent's choices for educating their children. I may be wrong.
Regardless of whether the country you're trading with is free, the consumer in the free-trade country still wins because his choices are broadened. Also competition is open which creates a greater incentive for other producers in the field to try harder - again the consumer wins. Artificially stifled competition through tariffs tends toward producer complacency and the consumer loses.
One thing is for certain Pat Buchanan's relevance to the conservative movement has long since passed. I hate to say it, but I'm not sure he is playing with a full deck.
Pat needs to realize that conservatism doesn't revolve around him. He was blown out in 3 elections, so now he's a professional sore loser.
And he's beginnng to tick me off, everytime I see him on Fox. Argghhh. I used to like him. Now all he does is annoy the living xxxx out of me.
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