Posted on 11/10/2012 6:50:16 PM PST by Steelfish
BUCHANAN: IS THE GOP HEADED FOR THE BONEYARD?
Patrick J. Buchanan 11/9/2012
After its second defeat at the hands of Barack Obama, under whom unemployment has never been lower than the day George W. Bush left office, the Republican Party has at last awakened to its existential crisis.
Eighteen states have voted Democratic in six straight elections. Among the six are four of our most populous: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California. And Obama has now won two of the three remaining mega-states, Ohio and Florida, twice.
Only Texas remains secure — for now.
At the presidential level, the Republican Party is at death’s door.
Yet one already sees the same physicians writing prescriptions for the same drugs that have been killing the GOP since W’s dad got the smallest share of the vote by a Republican candidate since William Howard Taft in 1912.
In ascertaining the cause of the GOP’s critical condition, let us use Occam’s razor — the principle that the simplest explanation is often the right one.
Would the GOP wipeout in those heavily Catholic, ethnic, socially conservative, blue-collar bastions of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois, which Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan swept, have anything to do with the fact that the United States since 2000 has lost 6 million manufacturing jobs and 55,000 factories?
Where did all those jobs and factories go? We know where.
They were outsourced. And in the deindustrialization of America, the Republican Party has been a culpable co-conspirator.
Unlike family patriarch Sen. Prescott Bush, who voted with Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond against JFK’s free-trade deal, Bush I and II pumped for NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and opening America’s borders to all goods made by our new friends in the People’s Republic of China.
Swiftly, U.S. multinationals shut factories here, laid off......
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
Your post is absolutely correct. Measured in terms of the dollar value of the products made here in the U.S., our manufacturing output is at an all-time high. What we don't have, however ... and we will likely never have again ... is a manufacturing economy built around massive factories that employ thousands of people working multiple shifts. Those days are over. Even most industries in China don't operate that way.
I think it would be helpful for everyone who has an interest in this subject (Pat Buchanan included) to sit down and have a serious reality-check about the history of U.S. manufacturing. Too many people look at a very small window of time -- the post-WW2 period when U.S. manufacturing employment was enormous -- and think of that as the norm. The reality is that the post-WW2 period was the exception, not the norm ... because the U.S. was the only major industrial power to emerge from World War II with our infrastructure and industrial capacity intact.
I'm sorry Mr. Buchanan cannot go back to those "good old days" of Eisenhower, "Lassie" and the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was all a construct and an anomaly of history, folks.
It's not Pat that is too late. He has been warning of EXACTLY what is happening for a very, very, very long time. If they haven't already someone will be along shortly to try and cloud that fact with some straw-man Pat is 'anti-Semitic' BS.
ok.. so by your supposition we should have won. WE DID NOT WIN BECAUSE NOT ENOUGH VOTERS WANT TO WORK FOR WHAT THEY HAVE. pLAIN AND SIMPLE. wE WILL NOT WIN A PRESIDENCY AGAIN IN THE NEAR FUTURE BECAUSE WE WILL NOT OFFER THE JOBLESS INCOME THAT THE DEMS ARE FAMOUS FOR. sANTA CLAUS. THOSE VOTES ARE ALREADY RIGGED ANYWAY. jUST LOOK AT THE 123 PERCENT VOTING. wHO IS GONNA LOOK INTO IT? hOLDER? This once great country is on it’s knees and the kenyan is trying to strangle us. Who do we have as a shield? Boner. That idiot is a drunk and had an fbi file a mile long and male pages are involved. Remember the male page molestations?
” - - - I think the best chance for the GOP to become relevant again is to become Populist.”
Since that has always been dogma of the Republicans In Name Only from day one, why has Populist Dole, Populist McCain and Populist Romney failed to win to Populist Democrats?
IMHO, any wanna-be Political Party is going to be rejected for the real thing. Hence, the more we try to be like the other kids on the block, the more the kids around the other blocks are going to wup us, every time.
The desire to be liked has bought us nothing but trouble: RINOs, Bipartisan Compromise, Abject Cave-ins, cheap verbal abuse by The Media, Sobbing Speaker of The House, repeated Presidential losses to one Communist Democrat, etc., etc., etc.
Being more like a Democrat is to eventually become a Democrat. Gradual or rapid, it is still a Cave-In. We will then be Republicans In Name Only in one-Party Nation.
You are entirely correct. The illegals around here, who virtually all came to work in the fields, arrived extremely industrious (you have to be to get up at 3:30 in the morning and go out and freeze, and get dirty and bit by bugs, and then be boiling by noon when the work day ends). Of course, some pick up American habits and get a little lazy later on, but no more than the rest of us. The crime rate for Hispanics in this area is fairly high, but this primarily is outside of harvest season and/or ones who no longer work. Work seems to be a good thing. Surprise!
There are those who pick up on the anchor baby thing: more kids = more TANF and foodstamps. But this is the system's fault. Obviously if the welfare is there many of any ancestry are going to take advantage of it.
Overall they may tend to vote for Obama but I believe the majority live conservative everyday lives like we espouse. And I am aware of many who have worked their way out of welfare and live on earnings (sometimes it is the older children 18+ who support the test of the family).
You make a good point. Married women went for Romney in substantial numbers as opposed to single white women. Both in 2008 and 2012 single white women according to Gallup voted overwhelming for Obama. Much of this has to do with the uncertainty that comes with being female and single.
Oh for the love of God, STHU. She is over.
People seem to forget that the 1994 "Republic Revolution" gave the Republican Party control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Most of those states Buchanan lists that were large states as far back as the 1950s have been heavily Democratic since before most of us were born.
Not even getting into good / bad of losing those manufacturing jobs. But more manufacturing = more unions and that means more democrat influence. so I don’t agree with Buchanan’s supposed point
But its hard to rebut this point made by Buchanan:
“Still, the GOP crisis is not so much illegal as legal immigration. Forty million legal immigrants have arrived in recent decades. Some 85 percent come from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Most arrived lacking the academic, language and labor skills to compete for high-paying jobs.”
This is the result of unlimited chain migration.
“You’re right, but all those well-paid workers were staunch Democratic voters.”
The “conventional wisdom” is that the GOP has to change its ideology because of shrinking numbers.
So where the HELL are all of the articles in the MSM about the MSM needing to change their own damn politics because of shrinking audience numbers??
Enough rational thought, I now return you to your Saturday evening, already in progress.
Yeah all those Italians and Greeks are taking advantage of all that welfare money. Get real.
The GOP chose to nominate their candidate for whom supported the bailouts and other financial mechanisms but was against the support for things as the auto bailout.
The better approach would have been someone opposed to both.
The Dems played up Mitt's support for 'wall street'. That worked in Ohio and PA.
The siren song of populism will return, because the affects of global wage arbitrage will only get more obvious. The skepticism toward 'free trade' and similar positions will only increase.
Yes that agrees with what I see too. Thanks
It's already there. Two-in-a-row RINOs equaled a lot of stay at home conservative voters. That they ever considered Christie a viable candidate verifies the GOP is truly out of touch and a waste of effort to conservative voters.
A black or latino candidate in either candidacy position would have secured far more minority votes than what Romney mustered. The obvious was apparently beyond the view of the GOP-kingmakers. Unless drastic ideology changes are made to and by the GOP hierarchy, incorporating true conservative values and candidates espousing them, 2016 will be no different.
I see the Democrats today as being more elitist than anything.
bloody hell, he is right on.
“As long as conservative can agree on a particular third party ... good riddance to the ineffectual GOP. However, to get most conservatives to agree on a particular third party will be the trick.”
I agree on both counts. Or maybe some true conservative heavyweights could join, say, the Constitution Party to get the ball rolling. I bet the multitudes would soon follow.
At any rate, it’s clear that playing ball with the Republicans hasn’t kept us from looking straight into the abyss.
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