Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
“No modern precedent exists for the revival of a party so badly defeated, so intensely discredited, and so essentially split as the Republican Party is today.”
Taken from “The Party That Lost Its Head” by Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, this excerpt, about Barry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964, led Thursday’s column by E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post.
Dionne is warning what could happen if the GOP perpetrates the political atrocity of nominating Donald Trump.
For weeks now, the Post’s editorial page has sermonized about the “moral” obligation of all righteous Republicans to repudiate Trump.
The Post’s solicitude for the well-being of the Republican Party is the stuff of legend. Yet it is a bit jarring to see these champions of abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, and visitation rights for cross-dressers in the girls’ room, standing in a pulpit lecturing on morality.
Yet, there was something off about that Chapman-Gilder quote.
First, both were members of the Harvard-based, Rockefeller-backed, liberal Ripon Society. Second, their prognosis of the party’s future proved to be spectacularly wrong.
The year, 1966, their book on the headless GOP appeared, to press hosannas, Richard Nixon led the party to its greatest off-year victory since 1946, adding 47 new seats in the House.
Two years later, Nixon won the presidency, inaugurating an era in which Republicans won five out of six presidential contests, two by 49-state landslides.
Out of Goldwater’s defeat came the New Majority and Reagan Revolution. And Chapman and Gilder moved rightward to serve with distinction in that revolution.
The prodigal sons were welcomed home, and Gilder would recant:
“The far Right — the same men I dismissed as extremists in my youth — turned out to know far more than I did. At least the ‘right-wing extremists,’ as I confidently called them, were right on almost every major policy issue from welfare to Vietnam to Keynesian economics and defense…”
While the Goldwater campaign, as an insurgency of outsiders, bears comparison with Trump’s, in other ways it does not.
Goldwater never compiled anything near the vote that Trump did. At this point in 1964, Goldwater was behind Johnson 79-18 in the Gallup poll. Trump is behind Hillary Clinton by single digits. New polls have him running even in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Now, consider the issues comparison with 1964.
In July 1964, Johnson signed the popular Civil Rights Act that Goldwater had opposed. The GOP Convention in San Francisco revealed a deeply divided party, subject to the charge, validated by the rule-or-ruin Rockefeller-Romney faction, that it was receptive to right-wing radicals.
Lyndon Johnson’s decision to bomb North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident made him a war leader, and Americans rally to presidents in a time of war.
In 2016, however, Trump holds a fistful of face cards. After eight years of President Obama, he is the candidate of change in 2016, and Clinton is the candidate of same.
Trump may bring more excitement than some folks can handle.
But Clinton has become a crashing bore, until she gets agitated, and then the voice rises to where she sounds like the siren on the hook-and-ladder in “Chicago Fire.”
Other than that she would be the first woman president, what is there about her agenda that has popular appeal? That lack of appeal explains why her crowds are a fraction of Bernie Sanders’.
The Clinton of 2016 is not the Clinton of 2008.
As for the issues dividing Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump appears to have won the argument, if the debate is decided by voter preferences rather than Beltway preferences.
Trump’s denunciation of NAFTA and other “free-trade” deals Ryan supports is echoed by Sanders, who opposed those deals when they were up for a vote. Hillary Clinton no longer rhapsodizes over husband Bill’s NAFTA, and signals she will not support Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership in a lame-duck session.
Ryan professes to be a man of principle. Why does he not then stand by his principles, as Goldwater did, and bring up TPP for a vote?
Is Paul Ryan’s “immigration reform” package as popular inside his party as Trump’s tough line? It would seem not. The longer the primaries went on, the closer the other GOP candidates moved toward Trump. And if Ryan believes in it on principle, why not bring it up?
Ryan voted for the Iraq War that Trump calls a disaster. The people seem now to agree with Trump that the war was misconceived.
Thursday’s Post reported that, five years ago, Ryan stood on the House floor to declare, “This is our defining moment.”
And what was Ryan’s defining moment?
“On that day in 2011,” said the Post, “the House’s new GOP majority approved Ryan’s budget plan — which …called for cuts in a government program that voters knew and loved: Medicare.
“Ryan … wanted eventually to turn the massive health-benefit program over to private insurers.”
Come to think of it, Barry Goldwater wanted to turn Social Security over to private enterprise. How did that one work out?
Hmmm
There is little question that Ryan “speaks” for the “GOP” and that Trump “speaks” for the “people”. What is different about Trump’s support is that many people who are voting for him are not voting for the “GOP”, only for Mr. Trump. The last candidate to have this effect on the voters was JFK. This point is self evident to Mr. Trump, the GOP and to the establishment in general. The meaning of all this is simple; Trump can potentially bypass not just the GOP power brokers, but most of the establishment as well. At least early on in his administration. And thus leave a lot of the “players” in Washington on the side lines. It is this reality that has so many movers and shakers sh*tting their pants over Trump. No one in Washington gives a damn about philosophical or ideological differences between the candidates. Washington has been, and always will be about power. And the establishment ( the 2 parties are for all intent and purposes one and the same these days) is watching in horror as Mr. Trump, along with the American people take it away from them.
No one person speaks for any party or the country for that matter. It is a get what you can while you can before the shit blows up in our face kinda thing.
Ryan is just trying to act like he is in charge to save face.
Trump knows this and should use this to his advantage, if fact he will use this to his advantage, Ryan will be Trumps bitch and everyone but the sheep will know it.
Yes indeed to the comments above. The people are sick of both political parties. Sanders is by far more popular than Clinton (in actual votes by the way if not delegates) and Trump’s disdain for the establishment is his biggest asset. He just hasn’t been up against the kind of organized delegate lockdown achieved by the nefarious Mrs. Clinton. Ergo, we have this bizarre situation whereby the only two candidates with any real appeal, Trump and Sanders are both in conflict with their own parties. I suspect if Clinton succeeds in her self-anointed candidacy, the Dems will take it on the chin. If the Donald’s staff has any research abilities at all and can dig into the foreign policy accomplishments of Killary, the picture they could paint would make Lady MacBeth look like Florence Nightengale. Maybe if he beats Killary, the Donald should get the Nobel Peace Prize. But who knows wtf Trump would actually do? I did read about a letter from many of Washington’s neocon policy wonks threatening resignation if Trump wins: The only bright spot on the horizon I’ve seen in a while. Maybe the Donald would even go after some of the treasonous bastards who attacked their own country in order to grease the wheels of the war machine. Maybe he’d start WW3. Who knows? Scary times. The rest of the world must be getting very nervous.
No one that has been presented for my “vote” has ever “spoke for me.”
And screw the establishment on all sides.
They created this mess then sought to chemically lobotomize us to not notice, or fall the opposition to stop it.
In summation, who the freak cares. Unless your neighbors wake up and pull their heads from their bums and vote out the cancerous, controlled, corrupted, professional, and nearly lifelong, CONgresscritters, how possibly could things change.
Yes, if the geniuses who pushed the Iraq war resigned and the holier than thou celebrities made good on their promises to move to Canada, the trump movement would do more for the USA than Hillary ever would.
Ryan the RINO.
I believe most ‘conservatives’ and ‘independets’ want shit to get done. Practical, common sense actions.
They want the wall built. They want money xfers to Mexico stopped, E-Verify for jobs, end of H1-B visa scam, end of the government intruding in their lives.
Fuck the ‘conservative’ agenda – whatever it is.
I just hope Trump sticks to what has worked so far in this campaign. If he compromises on the core issues that got him so many primary votes before the general election, some of those supporters may back away. He should not get overconfident of his “Art of the Deal” skills until well after the election, and even then, sparingly.
So the Washington Post proudly announces that 20 reporters have been assigned to study Trump’s past for any dirt they can find.
If only the same kind of interest had been devoted to the mysterious Barak Obama.
The hypocrisy is nauseating.
[img
[/img]
Good, hope that party does die off, that would only leave one dangerous political party to go, lets pray Bernie guts it like a fish.
Gayle,
Already investigating Trump’s former butler for “threats” against the fraud in the WH.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/us/politics/donald-trumps-longtime-butler-calls-for-violence-against-obama-secret-service-to-investigate.html?_r=0
And what are we hearing about cankles? That’s right. Crickets.
Yes, stunning hypocrisy.
Who speaks for US? Both parties actions cause the Purple Mountain Majesties above the Fruited Plains to cry from coast to coast that RINOs and Rats are Fascist, Communist, Muslim Pervert Traitors and the Foreign Press amplify and echo it around the world. The NYC MSM speaks for the Oligarchs like the Old Pravda did. Will they ever demand the IRS really audit Harpy, the Federal Reserve, the imaginary Fort Knox gold, and the NYC Banksters? But then something not even worth reporting becomes like the crime of the week; how did it become a National Crime for a Floridian to sell a pistol? Do you know the DoJ has arrested journalist for reporting “improperly” about BLM Comrades, the Feds murder of LaVoy Finicum in Oregon; people blowing the whistle on GMOs, Chemtrails, Vaccines etc. Did Oswald really shoot JFK; Vince Foster wrap himself in a rug and shoot himself; Ron Brown die because of an emergency landing; the Twin Towers and Bldg 7 just fall down; did Judge Scalia or hundreds of whistle-blowers really die of natural causes? Who speaks for US anymore? Grow a Voice and Vote Trump (Comrade Sanders did his best but the DNC screwed him good); dust off the Torches and Pitchforks if you have to.
It’s the bitch of trying to appeal to so many different groups of people. The Republicans and Dems who have run things for years.SUCK! While many are clueless,Many have figured out that the country is in debt trouble. We need some serious changes. I hope we get some before the country goes down the tubes.
[img
[/img]
“He should not get overconfident of his “Art of the Deal” skills until well after the election, and even then, sparingly.”
Riiight, because Trump is known for his restraint and light, deft, touch..
Paul Ryan has his 30 pieces of silver.Opening back door to let flood of illegal wet backs into the US,while citizens stand in long TSA lines.SECEDE