The Other McCain

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Pat Buchanan Nails It

Posted on | December 8, 2019 | Comments Off on Pat Buchanan Nails It

You just need to go read this column. Years ago (it was around the time of the Iraq War, as I recall), William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a column in which he declared that it was no longer possible to defend Patrick J. Buchanan against accusations of anti-Semitism. Buckley’s mastery of forensic method is not to be disputed, but the targeting of Buchanan is an example of the “urge to purge” that has so often damaged the conservative cause. Buchanan’s decades of loyal service to the Republican Party — he was a key adviser to both Nixon and Reagan — ought to have entitled him to a certain amount of deference, even from such an eminent figure as Buckley, and as I’ve often said, you cannot build a successful movement by a process of subtraction. When the conservative movement was on the upswing in the 1960s, it’s understandable why Buckley felt a need to repudiate the John Birch Society. Since the end of the Reagan presidency, however, we have seen the emergence of division between the leadership of the movement and the rank and file. Buchanan has always represented the populist side of conservatism and if, in channeling the spirit of the disgruntled masses, he has been guilty of playing footsie with Jew-haters, this is a grievous fault, and grievously hath Buchanan answered it. His value as an analyst and strategist is undiminished by his faults, however.

Buchanan has the old-fashioned idea that politics is about people — identify the key voter groups, determine what interests motivate them, and from this process you can find a way to engage and persuade them. Buchanan is credited with coining the phrase “Silent Majority” to describe the middle- and working-class Americans who were weary of the chaotic turmoil of the 1960s, and he offers similar insights in analyzing developments in the Democratic Party coalition leading up to 2020:

The “diversity is our strength!” party is starting to look rather monochromatic in its upper echelons these days.
The four leading candidates for its presidential nomination — Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg — are all white.
The six candidates who have qualified for the December 19 debate—the front four, plus Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer—are all white.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are both white, as are Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Whip Dick Durbin.
The chairs of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees managing impeachment, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, are both white. And as Congressman Al Green noted Wednesday, all three experts Nadler invited to make the Democrats’ case for impeachment were white law professors. How come?
Absent affirmative action by the DNC, neither Cory Booker, the leading black candidate for the nomination, nor Julian Castro, the leading Hispanic, will be on the stage December 19. . . .
African Americans are a bedrock constituency of the Democratic Party. In recent presidential elections, they have voted 90 percent for the party’s nominee, and even higher for Barack Obama.
How is Mayor Pete doing with this constituency?
While running first in some polls in Iowa, his share of the African-American vote in South Carolina, in a recent poll, was zero. Buttigieg had no black support in a state where African Americans constitute more than 60 percent of the Democratic vote. . . .

Read the whole thing. There is an obvious disconnect between what the Democrats say they stand for and what they actually do. If you were paying attention to Kamala Harris’s supporters the past couple of weeks, you know that (b) they feel she has been cheated by the process, and (b) they hate Pete Buttigieg with the heat of ten thousand suns. All the Hollywood money pouring into Buttigieg’s coffers is an ill omen for Democrats — their elite have lost touch with the party base, much like happened to the GOP in 2012, when the Republican establishment backed Mitt Romney over the protests of the Tea Party grassroots.

So now Democrats have the #PrimarySoWhite for a party whose most loyal constituents are “people of color,” and this does not bode well for their effort to defeat Trump next year.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

Category: Democrats, Election

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