Tag: Pat Buchanan

Is Obama’s World a Utopian Myth?

Speaking in Greece on his valedictory trip to Europe as president, Barack Obama struck a familiar theme: “(W)e are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude form of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism that is built around an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ …

“(T)he future of humanity and the future of the world is going to be defined by what we have in common, as opposed to those things that separate us and ultimately lead us into conflict.”

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That the world’s great celebrant of “diversity” envisions an even more multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial America and Europe is not news. This dream has animated his presidency.

But in this day of Brexit and president-elect Donald Trump new questions arise. Is Obama’s vision a utopian myth? Have leaders like him and Angela Merkel lost touch with reality? Are not they the ones who belong to yesterday, not tomorrow?

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A Trump Doctrine — ‘America First’

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

However Donald Trump came upon the foreign policy views he espoused, they were as crucial to his election as his views on trade and the border.

Yet those views are hemlock to the GOP foreign policy elite and the liberal Democratic interventionists of the Acela Corridor.

Trump promised an “America First” foreign policy rooted in the national interest, not in nostalgia. The neocons insist that every Cold War and post-Cold War commitment be maintained, in perpetuity.

On Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” Trump said: “You know, we’ve been fighting this war for 15 years. … We’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, $6 trillion — we could have rebuilt our country twice. And you look at our roads and our bridges and our tunnels … and our airports are … obsolete.”

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Memo to Trump: ‘Action This Day!’

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

“In victory, magnanimity!” said Winston Churchill.

Donald Trump should be magnanimous and gracious toward those whom he defeated this week, but his first duty is to keep faith with those who put their faith in him.

The protests, riots and violence that have attended his triumph in city after city should only serve to steel his resolve.

As for promptings that he “reach out” and “reassure” those upset by his victory, and trim or temper his agenda to pacify them, Trump should reject the poisoned chalice. This is the same old con.

Trump should take as models the Democrats FDR and LBJ.

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What Hath Trump Wrought?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

“If I don’t win, this will be the greatest waste of time, money and energy in my lifetime,” says Donald Trump.

Herewith, a dissent. Whatever happens Tuesday, Trump has made history and has forever changed American politics.

Though a novice in politics, he captured the Party of Lincoln with the largest turnout of primary voters ever, and he has inflicted wounds on the nation’s ruling class from which it may not soon recover.

Bush I and II, Mitt Romney, the neocons and the GOP commentariat all denounced Trump as morally and temperamentally unfit. Yet, seven of eight Republicans are voting for Trump, and he drew the largest and most enthusiastic crowds of any GOP nominee.

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A Presidency From Hell?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Should Donald Trump surge from behind to win, he would likely bring in with him both houses of Congress.

Much of his agenda — tax cuts, deregulation, border security, deportation of criminals here illegally, repeal of Obamacare, appointing justices like Scalia, unleashing the energy industry — could be readily enacted.

On new trade treaties with China and Mexico, Trump might need economic nationalists in Bernie Sanders’ party to stand with him, as free-trade Republicans stood by their K-Street contributors.

Still, compatible agendas and GOP self-interest could transcend personal animosities and make for a successful four years.

But consider what a Hillary Clinton presidency would be like.

She would enter office as the least-admired president in history, without a vision or a mandate. She would take office with two-thirds of the nation believing she is untruthful and untrustworthy.

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Dump Duterte — for Starters

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Alliances are transmission belts of war.

So our Founding Fathers taught and the 20th century proved.

When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany in 1914, America sat out, until our own ships were being sunk in 1917.

When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany, Sept. 3, 1939, we stayed out until Hitler declared war on us, Dec. 11, 1941.

As the other Western powers bled and bankrupted themselves, we emerged relatively unscathed as the world’s No. 1 power. The Brits and French lost their empires, and much else, and ceased to be great powers.

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An Establishment in Panic

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Pressed by moderator Chris Wallace as to whether he would accept defeat should Hillary Clinton win the election, Donald Trump replied, “I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense.”

“That’s horrifying,” said Clinton, setting off a chain reaction on the post-debate panels with talking heads falling all over one another in purple-faced anger, outrage and disbelief.

“Disqualifying!” was the cry on Clinton cable.

“Trump Won’t Say If He Will Accept Election Results,” wailed The New York Times. “Trump Won’t Vow to Honor Results,” ran the banner in The Washington Post.

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Is the System Rigged? You Betcha.

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

“Remember, it’s a rigged system. It’s a rigged election,” said Donald Trump in New Hampshire on Saturday.

The stunned recoil in this city suggests this bunker buster went right down the chimney. As the French put it, “Il n’y a que la verite qui blesse.” It is only the truth that hurts.

In what sense is the system rigged?

Consider Big Media — the elite columnists and commentators, the dominant national press, and the national and cable networks, save FOX. Not in this writer’s lifetime has there been such blanket hatred and hostility of a presidential candidate of a major party.

“So what?” They reply. “We have a free press!”

But in this election, Big Media have burst out of the closet as an adjunct of the regime and the attack arm of the Clinton campaign, aiming to bring Trump down.

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The Donald Lives!

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Donald Trump turned in perhaps the most effective performance in the history of presidential debates on Sunday night.

As the day began, he had been denounced by his wife, Mike Pence, and his own staff for a tape of crude and lewd remarks in a decade-old “locker room” conversation on a bus with Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood.”

Tasting blood, the media were in a feeding frenzy. Trump is dropping out! Pence is bolting the ticket! Republican elites are about to disown and abandon the Republican nominee!

Sometime this weekend, Trump made a decision: If he is going down to defeat, he will go out as Trump, not some sniveling penitent begging forgiveness from hypocrites who fear and loathe him.

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Aborting the Trump Revolution

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

In taking that $915 million loss in 1995, and carrying it forward to shelter future income, Donald Trump did nothing wrong. By both his family and his business, he did everything right.

In a famous 1947 dissent, Judge Learned Hand wrote:

“[T]here is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. … Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.”

This writer’s father spent his career as a tax accountant who studied tax codes and utilized every permissible deduction to keep his clients’ tax bills as low as legally possible.

That was his business, as it is the business of every accountant, including those who prepare the returns of the politicians and journalists piling on Trump as some sort of scofflaw tax cheat who has evaded his moral obligations to the state.

One needs a machete to cut through this hypocrisy.

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Trump Right on Trade Predators

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Is America still a serious nation?

Consider. While U.S. elites were denouncing Donald Trump as unfit to serve for having compared Miss Universe 1996 to “Miss Piggy” of “The Muppets,” the World Trade Organization was validating the principal plank of his platform.

America’s allies are cheating and robbing her blind on trade.

According to the WTO, Britain, France, Spain, Germany and the EU pumped $22 billion in illegal subsidies into Airbus to swindle Boeing out of the sale of 375 commercial jets.

Subsidies to the A320 caused lost sales of 271 Boeing 737s, writes journalist Alan Boyle. Subsidies for planes in the twin-aisle market cost the sale of 50 Boeing 767s, 777s and 787s. And subsidies to the A380 cost Boeing the sale of 54 747s. These represent crippling losses for Boeing, a crown jewel of U.S. manufacturing and a critical component of our national defense.

Earlier, writes Boyle, the WTO ruled that, “without the subsidies, Airbus would not have existed … and there would be no Airbus aircraft on the market.”

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Is Charlotte Our Future?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Celebrating the racial diversity of the Charlotte protesters last week, William Barber II, chairman of the North Carolina NAACP, proudly proclaimed, “This is what democracy looks like.”

Well, if Barber is right, so, too, was John Adams, who warned us that “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

Consider what the protesters, who, exults Barber, “show us a way forward to peace and justice,” accomplished.

In the first two nights of rioting, the mob injured a dozen cops, beat white people, smashed and looted stores, blocked traffic, shut down interstate highways, got one person shot and killed, and forced the call-up of state troopers and National Guard to rescue an embattled Charlotte police force.

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How Trump Wins the Debate

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

On one of my first trips to New Hampshire in 1991, to challenge President George H. W. Bush, I ran into Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

He was returning to the scene of his ’68 triumph, when he had inflicted the first crippling wound on Lyndon Johnson.

“Pat, you don’t have to win up here, you know,” he assured me. “All you have to do is beat the point spread.”

“Beat the point spread” is a good description of what Donald Trump has to do in Monday night’s debate.

With only a year in national politics, he does not have to show a mastery of foreign and domestic policy details. Rather, he has to do what John F. Kennedy did in 1960, and what Ronald Reagan did in 1980.

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Trump & the Press — A Death Struggle

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Alerting the press that he would deal with the birther issue at the opening of his new hotel, the Donald, after treating them to an hour of tributes to himself from Medal of Honor recipients, delivered.

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. … President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”

The press went orbital.

“Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent” howled the headline over the lead story in The New York Times.

Its editorial called Donald Trump a “reckless, cynical bully” spreading political poison in an “absurdist presidential campaign,” adding that Trump is the “ultimate mountebank” using a “Big Lie” that “made him the darling of the wing nuts and racists” and “nativist hallucinators.”

You get the drift.

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Bibi Backs Trump — on Putin

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Since Donald Trump said that if Vladimir Putin praises him, he would return the compliment, Republican outrage has not abated.

Arriving on Capitol Hill to repair ties between Trump and party elites, Gov. Mike Pence was taken straight to the woodshed.

John McCain told Pence that Putin was a “thug and a butcher,” and Trump’s embrace of him intolerable.

Said Lindsey Graham: “Vladimir Putin is a thug, a dictator…who has his opposition killed in the streets,” and Trump’s views bring to mind Munich.

Putin is an “authoritarian thug,” added “Little Marco” Rubio.

What causes the Republican Party to lose it whenever the name of Vladimir Putin is raised?

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Last Chance for the ‘Deplorables’

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Speaking to 1,000 of the overprivileged at an LGBT fundraiser, where the chairs ponied up $250,000 each and Barbra Streisand sang, Hillary Clinton gave New York’s social liberals what they came to hear.

“You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” smirked Clinton to cheers and laughter. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.” They are “irredeemable,” but they are “not America.”

This was no verbal slip. Clinton had invited the press in to cover the LGBT gala at Cipriani Wall Street where the cheap seats went for $1,200. And she had tried out her new lines earlier on Israeli TV:

“You can take Trump supporters and put them in two baskets.” First there are “the deplorables, the racists, and the haters, and the people who … think somehow he’s going to restore an America that no longer exists. So, just eliminate them from your thinking…”

And who might be in the other basket backing Donald Trump?

They are people, said Clinton, “who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them. … These are people we have to understand and empathize with.”

In short, Trump’s support consists of one-half xenophobes, bigots and racists, and one-half losers we should pity.

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