"‘The Ideas Made It, But I Didn’t’" Pat Buchanan paving the way for Trump

Politico Magazine ^ | 4.22.2017 | Tim Alberta

[TakebackGOP]

"This rhetoric—deployed again during his losing bid for the 1996 GOP nomination, and once more when he ran on the Reform Party ticket in 2000—not only provided a template for Trump’s campaign, but laid the foundation for its eventual success. Dismissed as a fringe character for rejecting Republican orthodoxy on trade and immigration and interventionism, Buchanan effectively weakened the party’s defenses, allowing a more forceful messenger with better timing to finish the insurrection he started back in 1991. All the ideas that seemed original to Trump’s campaign could, in fact, be attributed to Buchanan—from depicting the political class as bumbling stooges to singling out a rising superpower as an economic menace (though back then it was Japan, not China) to rallying the citizenry to “take back” a country whose destiny they no longer dictated. “Pitchfork Pat,” as he was nicknamed, even deployed a phrase that combined Trump’s two signature slogans: “Make America First Again.”"

[TheTimeOfMan]

Well some of the ideas minus the anti-Semitism.

[dragnet2]

Who would have been a better president? A short bus full of Bush’s, Clintons or Obamas, or Buchanan? Lemme help ya here, Buchanan would have been better by a series of magnitudes.

[bigbob]

You betcha!

[TakebackGOP]

I wasn’t old enough to vote in 1996 or 2000, but if people knew how bad GWB would have been, they would have voted for Buchanan.

[Rockitz]

Pat was right and still is.

[dragnet2]

Even back when Buchanan for running for potus, we could clearly see he was the only choice when compared to the usual entrenched corrupt, pay to play political suspects, as mentioned in #3.

And looking back since Buchanan ran, we’ve been heading straight down hill, intentionally driven into into an abyss of debt, death, decline and weakness.

[dragnet2]

""A quarter-century before Trump descended into the atrium of his Manhattan skyscraper to launch his unlikely bid for the White House, Buchanan, until then a columnist, political operative and TV commentator, stepped onto a stage in Concord, New Hampshire, to declare his own candidacy 10 weeks ahead of the state’s presidential primary. Associating the “globalist” President George H. W. Bush with “bureaucrats in Brussels” pursuing a “European superstate” that trampled on national identity, Buchanan warned his rowdy audience, “We must not trade in our sovereignty for a cushioned seat at the head table of anybody’s new world order!”" A quarter-century before Trump descended into the atrium of his Manhattan skyscraper to launch his unlikely bid for the White House, Buchanan, until then a columnist, political operative and TV commentator, stepped onto a stage in Concord, New Hampshire, to declare his own candidacy 10 weeks ahead of the state’s presidential primary. Associating the “globalist” President George H. W. Bush with “bureaucrats in Brussels” pursuing a “European superstate” that trampled on national identity, Buchanan warned his rowdy audience, “We must not trade in our sovereignty for a cushioned sat at the head table of anybody’s new world order!”

___________________________________________

It's a shame Americans got conned, hoodwinked and lied to, over and over and over and kept coming back for more. I call it battered voter syndrome. They just couldn't get enough abuse.

[ForYourChildren]

Pat Buchanan would have made an unbelievably great president.

And all this crap about him being an anti-Semite is #FAKENEWS. People promoting this concept have been badly mislead.

[dragnet2]

"Buchanan at his home, holding a replica of Robert E. Lee’s revolver. | André Chung for Politico"

To think of what could have been all these years later.

[dragnet2]

Btw, tx for posting. Very good article.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think the charge of anti-semitism against Buchanan is hooey.

[Luke21]

I get so sick of the leftist repetition of antisemitism. I don’t agree with Pat on Israel, but I do on nearly everything else. I met him twice. He’s a great guy and was miles and years ahead of his time.

He was against NAFTA and GATT from the beginning, a populist’s populist. I proudly supported him in 1996. I almost did in 1992, but held with GWB, not thinking he would throw the game to the Clintons. Dole won the 1996 nomination and never even tried in the fall.

[sargon]

Well some of the ideas minus the anti-Semitism.

Pat Buchanan isn't an anti-Semite, as far as I can see.

Referring to the 1991 Newsweek article Is Pat Buchanan Anti-Semitic?, which references William F. Buckley's famous print attack on Buchanan, it's clear—if one wants to go back 25+ years—that Pat has made some "edgy" statements which were critical of Israeli influence on American policy. He has also expressed skepticism regarding the guilt of some accused Nazis, such as John Demjanjuk being Treblinka's "Ivan the Terrible."

Back in 1991 when Pat announced his candidacy, the Media used his "America First" stance as a smear in the very same way that it was used against President Trump last year—by reckoning back to the isolationist "America First" movement of the 1930's, which was seen as sympathetic to the Nazi regime.

In any event, I've always felt that accusations of anti-Semitism against Pat Buchanan were exaggerated, to say the least. I don't know Buchanan personally, but I can only judge him on the totality of what I've seen from him over my entire adult life—the last 35 years or so—and on that basis, I don't believe him to be an anti-Semite.

Buchanan has also been called racist, of course, for his critiques on black culture and the denial which permeates it...

[sargon]

Look at this section of the closing paragraph from the Politico article (emphasis added):

[Buchanan is] not unlike the countless Trump voters I met across the country in 2016, many of them older folks yearning for a return to the country of their youth, a place they remember as safer, whiter, more wholesome, more Christian, more confident and less polarized.

They just had to include the gratuitous racism swipe at Trump voters...

[Ohioan]

Buchanan was never a "fringe" candidate. He was systematically smeared in 1999 & 2000, by those serving the Bush II campaign. It was a disgusting misuse of the personnel involved, pushing a false narrative based upon innuendo & ignorance; but Pat remained in the Republican mainstream until it became obvious that he was being falsely demonized for advocating what he had long advocated as acceptable Republican values.

Had he been listened to, our Federal Deficit would be far lower. Yet more important there would be far fewer young Americans hobbling around with artificial limbs, and such. The Bush bots, of course, never really showed their true colors until the 2016 campaign.

[Louis Foxwell]

Trump will be the president Buchanan could have been.

[BestPresidentEver]

Buchanan set things back. He has a self destructive streak in him. He had his whole life to write a book saying we should have let Hitler win WW2 and he waits until he’s in a political campaign to release it. And he knows that if says this it will get misinterpreted as saying he wanted Hitler to win. So he can sit there with a stupid grin on his face and prove to his accusers he never said that. Buchanan lives for childish stunts like that. Everything he does is a set up for these little gotcha moments that he finds so important. I honestly wish I had never heard his name.

[donna]

Wake up and smell the coffee.

The anti-Semitism charge is fake the same as it is with President Trump and everyone here at FR.

[Disestablishmentarian]

>>He had his whole life to write a book saying we should have let Hitler win WW2<<

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That is FALSE!

You obviously have not read the Book.

His main thesis was that Churchill ignited WWII with his rhetoric about defending Poland, or there might not have been a war, or a Jewish holocaust.

At worst, Hitler would have turned East and gone to war with Stalin first, allowing Europe years to prepare which they badly needed.

You are victim of FAKE NEWS.