Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
Neither George W. Bush, the Republican Party nominee in 2000 and 2004, nor Jeb, the dethroned Prince of Wales, will be in Cleveland. Nor will John McCain or Mitt Romney, the last two nominees.
These former leaders would like it thought that high principle keeps them away from a GOP convention that would nominate Donald Trump. Petulance, however, must surely play a part. Bush Republicans feel unappreciated, and understandably so.
For Trump’s nomination represents not only a rejection of their legacy but a repudiation of much of post-Cold War party dogma.
America crossed a historic divide and entered a new era. Even should Trump lose, there is likely no going back.
Trump has attacked NAFTA, MFN for China and the South Korea trade deal as badly negotiated. But the problem lies not just in the treaties but in the economic philosophy upon which they were based.
Free-trade globalism was a crucial component of the New World Order, whose creation George H. W. Bush called the new great goal of U.S. foreign policy at the United Nations in October of 1991.
Bush II and Jeb are also free-trade zealots.
But when the American people discovered that the export of their factories and jobs to low-wage countries, and sinking salaries, were the going price of globalism, they rebelled, turned to Trump, and voted for him to put America first again.
Does anyone think that if Trump loses, we are going back to Davos-Dubai ideology, and Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership is our future? Even Hillary Clinton has gotten the message and dumped TPP.
Economic nationalism is the future.
The only remaining question is how many trade deficits shall America endure, and how many defeats shall the Republican Party suffer, before it formally renounces the free-trade fanaticism that has held it in thrall.
The Bush idea of remaking America into a more ethnically, culturally, diverse nation through mass immigration, rooted in an egalitarian ideology, also appears to be yesterday’s enthusiasm.
With Republicans backing Trump’s call, after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, for a moratorium on Muslim immigration, and the massacres in Paris, Nice and the Pulse Club in Orlando, Florida, diversity seems to be less celebrated.
Here, the Europeans are ahead of us. Border posts are being re-established across the continent. Behind the British decision to quit the EU, was resistance to more immigration from the Islamic world and Eastern Europe.
On Sunday, French President Francois Hollande was booed at memorial services in Nice for the hundreds massacred and maimed by a madman whose family roots were in the old French colony of Tunisia.
Marine Le Pen of the National Front, who wants to halt immigration and quit the EU, is running far ahead of Hollande in the polls for next year’s elections.
As for the foreign policies associated with the Bushes, the New World Order of Bush I and the crusade for global democracy of Bush II “to end tyranny in our world” are seen as utopian.
Most Republicans ask: How have all these interventions and wars improved our lives or our world?
With 6,000 U.S. dead, 40,000 wounded, and trillions of dollars sunk, the Taliban is not defeated in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida and ISIS have outposts in a dozen countries. Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen are bleeding and disintegrating. Turkey appears headed for an Islamist and dictatorial future. The Middle East appears consumed in flames.
Yet, despite Trump’s renunciation of Bush war policies, and broad support to talk to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the neocons, who engineered many of the disasters in the Middle East, and their hawkish allies, seem to be getting their way for a new Cold War.
They are cheering the deployment of four battalions of NATO troops to the Baltic states and Poland, calling for bringing Sweden and Finland into NATO, pushing for sending weapons to Ukraine, and urging a buildup on the Black Sea as well as the Baltic Sea.
They want to scuttle the Iranian nuclear deal and have the U.S. Navy confront China to support the rival claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia to rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, some of which are under water at high tide.
Who represents the future of the GOP?
On trade and immigration, the returns are in. Should the GOP go back to globalism, amnesty or open borders, it will sunder itself and have no future.
And if the party is perceived as offering America endless wars in the Middle East and constant confrontations with the great nuclear powers, Russia and China, over specks of land or islets having nothing to do with the vital interests of the United States, then it will see its anti-interventionist wing sheared off.
At issue in the battle between the Party of Bush and Party of Trump: Will we make America safe again, and great again? Or are globalism, amnesty, and endless interventions our future?
Do we put the world first, or America First?
“Bush II and Jeb are also free-trade zealots.”
Actually, they’re both retarded and will say whatever they can be taught to repeat. Neither of those morons has the intellect to be zealous about anything above the level of ice cream flavors or cartoons.
“how many defeats shall the Republican Party suffer, before it formally renounces the free-trade fanaticism that has held it in thrall.”
Why do you give a shit, Pat? How many times do you have to be cornholed by your beloved GOP before you start to suspect that maybe the party itself is rotten to the core? Never mind for now formally renouncing the GOP. Just make a good start by trying to see whether your party is the source of your anal pain.
“Yet, despite Trump’s renunciation of Bush war policies, and broad support to talk to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the neocons, who engineered many of the disasters in the Middle East, and their hawkish allies, seem to be getting their way for a new Cold War.”
I guess you failed to notice that they’re getting their way in another area, too because Trump embraced their pick for VP in a moment of absolute Bushian genius. You were too busy bouncing on the Trumpoline to notice, probably.
“Who represents the future of the GOP?”
It looks like the neocons do.
“Do we put the world first, or America First?”
Where’d you get this “we” shit, anyway? There’s no “we” in the GOP. There’s only a “they” who never changes from one century to the next. Wake all the way up, Pat. The GOP is the same gang of thieves as the democrats. Same mob, different crews.
“Free Trade” got its start under Clinton and the Democrats with the original NAFTA, it isn’t an exclusively Republican thing.
And there is no will on the part of the ruling establishment of either side to do anything about it. They established it, they want to keep it.
The body of the Republican party -at least the majority of them as the current elections demonstrate- is starting to retake control of their party and make changes. The body of the Democrat party would probably do the same if they understood the issues and their causes, but their overall average intelligence level seems to prevent this (which is why they put up with continual economic and other abuse and suppression from the leaders they elect).
This election -if it takes place as normal- is the last shot at people regaining control of government from the Ruling Elite. If Trump loses then all hope is lost forever and the current rulers of the World Elite will own us forever without challenge.
“How many times do you have to be cornholed by your beloved GOP…”
Ed, that one made me laugh out loud, good one. I thought that word has gone the way of the Dodo.
Your comment made my day, “what’s this we shit?”
Thanks.
I remember watching Newt Gingrich on the house floor in the early 1990s holding a copy of Peter Drucker’s The Age of Discontinuity and preaching that we should opt for free trade. I bought it, read it, and sadly confess that at the naive age of 27 bought it hook line and sinker. I told my Dad about it and he said that Peter Drucker is in marketing. Figures that they would have to hire someone in marketing to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes! The Republican and Democratic parties should be abolished. Pat, you like the founding fathers, they abhorred political parties. Ponder that and why.
If you are Ed Schultz I miss you! I stopped watching the DNC lapdogs that refer to themselves as anchors on MSNBC. I just read zero hedge and the links in it.
Pat Buchanan is my choice for Secretary of State in a Trump Administration.
From what little I saw of the convention so far, it seemed that there was a lot of that “fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight the here” bullshit. Don’t get me wrong. If anyone wants to nuke Mecca and Medina, I’m all for it, but our efforts to control the Middle East have all failed. I think the hawkishness on display is just to make sure the Never Trumpers were dispatched, and because most GOP apparatchiks don’t know any other tune. I comfort myself that Trump doesn’t really believe much of it. He needs to watch his diet and take an aspirin a day.
While appearing defeated and distracting people with their presidential follies, the Bushies are quietly buying state and federal legislators and executives. They will continue to rig the system for the elite. Only the crisis of the 4 th Turning has a chance to change that but no guarantees.
overthecliff