A full-service authoritarian party like your modern GOP needs both legbreakers (to scare the rubes) and back-stabbers (to deal with obsolete legbreakers). The Ides of March being past, Palin water-carrier Matthew Continetti makes time to inform the WaPo– reading public that Pat Buchanan is No True Republican:
… Buchanan’s life has been remarkably consistent: He tends to bring out the worst in people. Still, the reader of Timothy Stanley’s biography, “The Crusader,” cannot help being impressed by the durability of Buchanan’s career. There is a dual aspect to his public life that is particularly striking. A communications legend whose innovations in punditry, for better or worse, will be mimicked long after he departs from the scene, Buchanan will forever be known for his reactionary, divisive and conspiratorial politics. Distinguishing Buchanan’s style from his substance allows one to appreciate both the man’s talents and the capacity of American democracy to resist demagoguery, scapegoating and isolation…
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After graduating from Georgetown, earning a journalism degree at Columbia and working briefly for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Buchanan caddied for Nixon again, becoming his press aide, speechwriter and liaison to conservatives in December 1964. The connection was electric.
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Nixon was never as conservative as liberals believe, but he understood the importance of protecting his right flank. Buchanan counseled him not to forget the “silent majority” of white working-class Americans who were unsettled by the revolutionary fervor of the late ’60s and early ’70s. He helped originate the strategy of using Vice President Spiro Agnew to attack the new class of liberal white professionals who wrote the nation’s newspapers and produced its television news. The payoff was Nixon’s reelection in 1972, when he won every state but Massachusetts and 61 percent of the popular vote.
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Nemesis arrived in the form of the Watergate break-in and coverup. Buchanan was not implicated in Watergate, but the president’s resignation in August 1974 left him without a job. He asked Gerald Ford to name him ambassador to apartheid South Africa. Ford refused.
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The two years Buchanan spent as Ronald Reagan’s communications director between 1985 and ’87 were his only other stint in government. Even as a Reagan adviser, however, he was sailing to the political frontier, where the eccentric and offbeat turn into the ugly fringe. By 1991, when George H.W. Bush warred with Saddam Hussein and global communism was no longer the threat that held various factions of conservatives together, Buchanan was totally at odds with the Republican mainstream…
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Republicans had no idea what to do about it. Buchanan could not win the GOP nomination — or even come close — but the ferocity of his oratory and the intensity of his support spooked the George H.W. Bush campaign into giving him a prime-time speaking slot at the party’s 1992 national convention. The result was Buchanan’s “religious war” speech on divisions in American culture, which may have made for great political theater but was justifiably repellent to most people…
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What one realizes after reading Stanley’s book is that the vocal minority that subscribes to Buchananism is not to be feared, but pitied. They stand so far from the center of American life that it is almost not worth worrying about them. The media may magnify their importance, but that is hardly a reason to take them seriously. When Buchanan left the GOP for good in 1999, hardly anyone noticed or cared…
My emphases. Shorter Continetti: “Look, after that closet liberal luzer Nixon made the mistake of taking Buchanan’s toxic advice (and just look what that got him), all us normal sane Republicans have avoided Pat completely (apart from the sainted Reagan’s brief pity-hire mission to the lunatics). We have nothing to do with Pat Buchanan, and if anyone mistakes him for a Republican, that just shows the depths to which the Democrat moonbats of the Liebral Media will sink in their efforts to smear the Real American Party(tm). He has been officially un-personed in our records, because shut up, that’s why!”
It’s a futile effort, apart from adding a line to Continetti’s CV. Assuming that Willard Romney is still The Eventually-Inevitable Nominee, come the Tampa convention, Sanctorum and/or RonPaul, plus a buffet selection of the previously-eliminated Klown Kar Kavalcade, are going to be speechifying in front of the Media Villagers and a wide selection of agenda-driven Citizen Bloggers. Those speeches are gonna make Buchanan circe 1992 look like the Caesarian orator Newt Gingrich mistakenly believes himself to be. Certain elements within the GOP (Uncle Pat among them) have long dreamed of their very own Chicago 1968 convention — a bacchanal where the weak-sister moderates and candyarsed squishes will be taken down once and for all. The Secret Service will presumably be able to keep non-virtual rioters out of the convention hall, but that will only encourage reporters of all ilk to scour the surrounding byways and lapdance emporiums for the full monty of GOP Elephants in musth.
Betty Cracker
I am so looking forward to the convention. I live fairly close by and plan to film the Hoveround Siege.
dogwood
This is rich coming from Continetti who’s a Pailinbot. If memory serves me correctly Palin was a Buchanan supporter, and she has eagerly stepped up to fill his shoes as his rightful heiress.
Yutsano
@Betty Cracker: Crazy speaker, crazy speaker, crazy speaker…then Willard hits the stage. There better be boos. Or it’ll be faker than Ann’s orgasms.
srv
Nothing would make me happier than seeing tea partiers getting beaten ala 1968 live on tv
The Dangerman
A brokered convention would be 20 gallons of fun in a 10 gallon hat; we couldn’t be that lucky.
The Moar You Know
The police are not here to create disorder, they’re here to preserve disorder.
Brachiator
@srv:
Actually, I have a feeling that it will be the Tea Party people administering the beat downs.
Many of the so-called professionals have predicted that Mitt will run toward the center after he wraps up the nomination, but I think that the wingnuts will keep pushing him hard right. He may try to talk mainly about the economy, but he will never be able to disavow any ultra conservative policy or plan.
The convention will be a wingnut orgy.
Downpuppy
Was Caesar ever really known as an orator?
WereBear (itouch)
So Pat isn’t conservative enough? Is the True Conservative turning out to be a mythical creature like Bigfoot? Would Bigfoot poll better than Romney?
Anoniminous
Last I checked Romney needed to take ~48% of the remaining delegates to stumble his way to 1,144. Given Newt and Frothy are splitting the Not-Romney vote it is highly likely he will get ’em.
Much as I’d like to see the GOP descend into faction fighting, I don’t think it is in the cards.
Bruce S
Isn’t Matthew Continetti the simpering moron who has written effusively of the brilliance of Sarah Palin. Frankly, as toxic as Pat Buchanan is, compared to Palin he is a deep thinker and rhetorician of the first order. Buchanan actually understands the world he hates and why. Say what you will of Pat, but he’s not just one of the mean girls in high school. Also, while no doubt ever on the make to sell his books, Buchanan is a person – relatively – of enormous gravitas and integrity compared to clowns who have “shameless grifter” or “puerile shill” written on their foreheads, like Ms. Palin and Master Continetti respectively.
“So Pat isn’t conservative enough?” Hate on Pat…pleeeze….he deserves it…but Buchanan is neither partisan hack nor a pure media creation. He’s an advocate of a certain strain of authentic conservatism. Not one that deserves any love, but attacks on Buchanan coming from this ridiculous corner are a joke.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Buchanan has always been an odd duck, not unlike his hero Nixon. He is mostly of the Paleoconservative mode, with its southern roots grounded in white supremacy, but also has a xenophobic side that manifests itself in isolationist theory, that is more akin to the glibertarians.
He would have been all for funding and protecting American eugenics programs, to purify the white race in America, but to his credit, seeing no reason we should waste perfectly good bombs overseas killing brown people. Which is his primary point of seduction for liberals, but for completely different reasons.
In his senile years, the brane doesn’t always filter out what the tongue wants to say for lizard brane expression. And his commentary just became too honest on the air for even the cable news circuit. Though he is a snug fit for Fox News.
He is and has been the chief spokesman for “The Silent Generation”, the ones giving us so much trouble from voting wingnut faithfully in recent years. They will be dieing off fairly soon, so maybe we can change some of this race based tribal bullshit that is killing the country.
The Dangerman
@Brachiator:
His VP choice will have to be practically brachiating; I don’t see how he runs well to the center with that anchor around him.
Anoniminous
Buchanan doesn’t go all frothy boehner over Greater Israel and so is no longer a “True Conservative.”
WJS
Hunter S. Thompson, 8/26/1997
Brachiator
@The Dangerman:
To be clear, I said that pundits talking standard wonk talk think that Mitt will run to the center. But he has recently trying to paint himself as more conservative than Santorum. This will intensify and paint him into a corner.
Mitt will say and do anything to secure the nomination, but I think he is too afraid to even pretend to defy the wingnut faction which has taken over the GOP.
Emerald
I actually met Pat Buchanan once. I understand why he lasted so long in the Village. He’s extremely personable, has a great sense of humor, and has the ability to laugh at himself.
Comes across as a super guy in person. I liked him, just for his personality.
The fact that he’s a political neanderthal and a true racist–well, when did such things matter to the Village?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Downpuppy:
Marc Antony’s original lines:
Friends! Romans! Countrymen!
I come today to seize your berry, not to praise it!
John
Eh. It doesn’t seem that bad to me. It’s true that Nixon wasn’t really a member of the Goldwaterian conservative movement. It’s true that Buchanan was at odds with the Republican establishment by 1991 – a guy who runs an insurgent campaign against a sitting president and receives no endorsements from anyone surely is, isn’t he? And it’s certainly true that he couldn’t win a nomination, or come close to winning one. And certainly Continetti isn’t arguing that Buchanan was a closet liberal – his point is that Buchanan’s brand of toxic populism was too extreme for the mainstream Republican Party.
This post seems kind of hackish to me. The modern Republican Party is awful, and Buchanan, as Continetti sort of admits, played a major role in shaping it. But over the last several decades it’s indisputable that Buchanan has been on the margins of the party, if a member of it at all. I’m no particular fan of Continetti – the judgment of a man who would write a full-throated defense of Sarah Palin ought to be seriously questioned. But what he writes about Buchanan seems well within the range of mainstream discourse.
Amir Khalid
The Republican obsession with excommunicating people is an alarming sight. When did they become a Stalinist outfit?
Frankensteinbeck
What a tremendously convoluted way of getting as close as possible to the word ‘racists’ while maintaining plausible deniability.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Amir Khalid:
I kind of see them as a Hydra Headed monster, with various factions trying to pull the beast this way and that. Some of them meaner and more purist than others. The GOP went through this during the Goldwater years, and later post Nixon. It usually ends, or has in the past, when a couple of things occur. One is length of time out of power, ie WH and presidency, and the other is a charismatic character shows up to tame the beast long enough to win elections. I don’t see either of those conditions at present.
Buchanan has set himself outside GOP proper for some time now, and especially during the Bush years, as he among other things, an ardent isolationist, hated the neo con adventures overseas. In other ways, he seems a good fit for the GOP of today, especially on social issues, but the toxic core of the man is race based, and some in the GOP are terrified at where parts of their party are headed on that score.
Terrified, as in losing voters, not for anything altruistic along the lines of fairness and compassion. Continetti just felt like taking a swipe at Buchanan, I think to make that point of fear. Too bad It’s like hunting elephants with a fly swatter.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: In fact, with the Fall of Limbaugh, the wingers are quite leaderless– so whatever it is, it isn’t Stalinism. It really seems that, as of right now, the inmates are running the asylum. Which is pretty scary, considering.
John M. Burt
This turn of conversation reminds me of a thought I’ve been rolling around for awhile: what would the Democratic and Republican parties be like right now, if we had been the ones to go insane?
If Senator Joe Biden had been primaried years ago, and Nancy Pelosi had just announced she wasn’t going to run for another term, if Ralph Nader and H. Bruce Franklin were duking it out for the Presidential nomination . . . ?
PeakVT
@Emerald: I’ve heard that several times about Buchanan – people like him in person. But ultimately, as a public figure, he needs to be judged for his contributions to the public discourse. The Village refused to do that. Combined with his usefulness as somebody who reliably generated outrage, his personal relationships earned him far more air time than he deserved.
@John M. Burt: The Dems would be in the middle of nowhere, in charge of nothing, because there isn’t a massive base of support for crazy lefties, and there isn’t a massive media infrastructure to con enough marginal supporters to get to a majority.
Villago Delenda Est
Say what you will about the tenets held by Pat Buchanan, at least he has an ethos.
dj spellchecka
isn’t this nearing peak “no true scotsman” territory?
“When Buchanan left the GOP for good in 1999, hardly anyone noticed or cared…”
in what meaningful way was the 1999 patrick j. different from the currently running for president in the gop primary ron paul… less goldbuggy?
Mudge
The use of”full monty” with the allusion to Mitt, Little Ricky, Ron Paul and Newt, especially Newt, made me bilious.
gene108
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
We’re all tribal at some irrational level. It really doesn’t have as much to do with race anymore than it has to do with who we want to identify with.
That sort of identity politics will never go out of style.
Bush, Jr., in 2000, ran a campaign that really moved away from the “Southern Strategy” for Nixon, Reagan and Bush, Sr., yet he managed to get strong identification with Southerners, because he owned a ranch, cleared brush and talked like them.
Add on top of it the scandals around the Clinton Administration that allowed him to frame out his campaign as restoring “honor and integrity” to the oval office and you have identity politics without an overt racial appeal.
For everyone hoping the “demographic shift” will just push Republicans into the sunset, really underestimates how and why people identify with certain candidates.
@John:
I’ve heard Buchanan defend himself, I think he’s right, that when the Republicans embraced the “culture wars” in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, they were able to beat Democrats across the board.
Buchanan, at some level, understood the Republicans need wedge issues to keep people voting Republican, because a pro-wealthy agenda alone just doesn’t sell well with most of the 99%.
To tie this back to the 2000 campaign, Bush, Jr. ran as a “compassionate conservative”, because typical conservative ideas about gutting social safety nets just didn’t sit well with voters. He had to run on a platform of having government programs that’d help most folks.
Bush, Jr.’s biggest domestic accomplishments, outside of the tax cuts, were things Democrats wanted to do, though maybe do them differently, such as expand Medicare to cover prescription drugs and expand the Department of Education.
Right now the Republicans have basically shed the veneer of “compassionate conservatism” and basically gone further to the right of anything Buchanan was talking about in 1992.
You have a Party, at some subconscious level, where they aren’t even aware of it that basically wants to nullify every amendment after the 12th or maybe the 10th.
When Rick Santorum and other conservatives say God gave the Bill of Rights to the Founders and/or the Founders were inspired by God to compose the Bill of Rights, you pretty much imply that all the other amendments weren’t divinely inspired and therefore aren’t as valid.
For example, to go back to the good old states rights days of the ante-bellum U.S., you need to repeal the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment is like a wet blanket on a lot of the 10th Amendment arguments conservatives like to say should be the status quo of the judicial system.
To make sure only the “right people” vote, you need to repeal the 15th and maybe the 19th, 24th and 26th amendments.
At some level, maybe not deliberately, these guys understand this, which is why they seem to talk up the Bill of Rights, but don’t say much about the other 17 amendments to the Constitution.
gene108
@dj spellchecka:
Less goldbuggy and less likely to want to rip-up-the-Constitution, with regards to Amendments 11-27. See post#29 for the reason.
Paul understands what a wet blanket the 14th Amendment is to states rights and tries to work around it.
Buchanan would leave the Constitution alone and not try to subvert Amendments 11-27 in as radical a way as Dr. Paul.
runt
Gee, I wonder why Buchanan wanted to go there?
Mike in NC
A racist’s dream job, back in the day.
Elizabelle
OT: that movie about the pet otter is on Turner Classic Movies at 10 p Eastern tonight. Bill Travers.
Ring of Bright Water
Would never know about it except a Balloon Juicer or two were enthusing about the film a few months back.
Go otters!
Citizen_X
To quote Scooby Doo, “Hurh?” What was so repellent about that convention was not just Buchanan’s speech, but the audience’s reaction to it. They were in full-throated roar in their approval. The whole thing came off as a Nuremburg rally.
Pretty much set the tone for the development of the Republican Party ever since then.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
I have no idea why people think this is valuable or important.
You know who else had an ethos?
I think that many liberals are done in by their own pacifism. They are firmly entrenched in the idea that it is indelicate to raise a voice, let alone ever fight over anything. And so they cling desperately to the idea of passively waiting for the great Deographic Shift to rescue them and save the nation.
The problem is, conservatives have no problem with fighting. And there is no guarantee that the new tribes will be any less crazy than the tribes they replace.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Snark alert. VDE was paraphrasing a line from The Big Lebowski. It’s practically an Internet tradition, at least around here.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@gene108:
This statement sounds irrational in it’s own way. Of course people identify with who they want to ID with, duh.
A part of the GOP is all about wealth, another doesn’t like the government, the part that dominates the GOP nowadays, is the most about race, especially right now, and is grounded in southern white supremacy. All the other shit they throw up is just so much flak cover. As well as class based, as witnessed by the south where you have the poorest whites willing to vote for white republicans who are will rob them blind. It largely is about class division, poor and rich, but that is at one level, a deeper level we see coming to surface, comes from where we fought a bloody civil war over. And it is primal, and atavistic , when let loose from restraint.
Opinions are opinions, and you are welcome to yours, but many of us see it different, and it is absolutely imperative, imho, that white liberals see past their learned privilege, and suffer the angst of self examination of racial tribalism in this country, or we don’t stand a chance.
Bruce S
Hard for me to fathom Continetti’s critiquing Buchanan’s 1992 convention speech, when his “shero” Sarah Palin’s entire career is just a dumbed down version of same.
John
If we’re comparing Buchanan to Ron Paul, the biggest difference would be that Buchanan left the Party and ran for president on a third party ticket. Paul did that 25 years ago, but returned to the Party long since.
Even ignoring this, I don’t really get your point – Ron Paul is also a fringe figure within the Republican Party.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Snark is overrated, and I have never seen The Big Lebowski. Appreciate the explanation, though.
Svensker
In fairness to Continetti (ack), Nixon was not someone who would ever get Republican votes today. He put in wage/price controls, wanted to get universal health care, didn’t much care for the Israelis, ended a war (I know he also escalated, but still) and opened up Red China.
Yes, he was a paranoid weirdo who did lotsa bad stuff but he was WAY to the left of the Teabaggers.
Buchanan is old school old white guy Irish Catholic conservative. The difference between him and Palin is that Buchanan had brains, was educated and was apparently a nice guy on a personal level even if he disliked every thing you stood for. Palin is an uneducated mean-girl, also too an idiot.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Just so you’re completely in the loop.
It’s a really good movie, by the way.
Perfect Tommy
A sign of the times?
http://www.teaparty2012.com
KoolEarl
Continetti is married to William Kristols daughter and Buchanan has been an adamant critic of the neo-con cabal in which Kristol is so prominent
Woodrowfan
@Elizabelle:
why bring that up here? Is that a significant otter??
Elizabelle
@Woodrowfan:
in otter words …
Chris
And that’s the difference between us and them, and one that goes a long way towards explaining the politics of the last half century. We used to have a real left flank, but we separated from it for good in the early 1950s when the “respectable” liberals – people like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther, the Kennedys – purged the far left from unions, machines and other Democratic organizations for good.
There’s never been a similar purge of John Birchers, McCarthyists and other crazy psychos on the right flank. Even when they had to govern from the center, as under the Eisenhower and (arguably) Nixon years, the Republicans never cut them out of politics – too reliable a source of support. And those guys certainly never had to put up with the police brutality (sometimes murderous) that the New Left movements did in the 1960s.
Made it a lot easier for them to hang on, and eventually inch their way back into the mainstream.
gene108
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
Governors Jindal and Haley disagree with you. You aren’t dealing with the old-time racial politics. Old-time racial politics would never have allowed non-whites to have positions of power over whites.
Haley’s administration going down in flames.
Jindal, from what I could find on the internet, seems to be a popular governor.
Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman, but conservatives haven’t kicked him out of the club because of this.
Race isn’t driving wedge politics like it did in 1990, 1980 and 1970.
The bigger draw/wedge issue today is religion, specifically how much Christianity is too much Christianity.
For the conservatives, there’s no such thing as too much Christianity being out in the public. There isn’t a place, where the Ten Commandments wouldn’t be a bad idea or having their religious beliefs trump secular law, such as the whole birth-control nonsense now.
Jindal wears his Christianity on his sleeve. Haley’s campaign website talked heavily about her conversion to her husband’s religion. These are things that appeal to conservatives and trump race now.
If Romney was any other Christian denomination other than Mormon, he’d have a stranglehold on the Republican nomination. A two year mission in his youth, active in his church, and a family man, whose married to the same woman for a long time, with kids and grandkids would be hard to really assail from the Right, with regards to the “family values” voters.
Santorum is hanging in their because he wears his Christianity on his sleeve and that appeals to a large segment of Republicans.
It really isn’t as much about race as you think it is anymore.
What drives wedge/identity politics right now isn’t about keeping blacks down. It’s a lot more about Christians in America feeling like they are under attack.
Or a shorter version is if Democrats act like Marsha Coakley versus Scott Brown, it doesn’t matter how the demographics play out. The Democrats will lose every time.
Despite the demographic shift, Republicans can still put out candidates that appeal to many voters, even if it’s only on a state or local level right now.
The coming demographic shift doesn’t mean as much for Democrats winning elections as people think. Democrats still have to put out an appealing product and not take votes for granted.
liberal
@Anoniminous:
Buchanan had an opinion posted at antiwar.com recently were he claimed in no uncertain terms that Obama was doing his utmost to avoid war with Iran, and was being pressured by the neocons.
Bruce S
“Continetti is married to William Kristol’s daughter”
Which means he’s going to inherit the editorship of Weakly Standard. Conservatism is all about marriedocracy.
DFS
@KoolEarl: This is the nut of the matter. If Buchanan hadn’t opposed the Iraq war, Continetti and the rest of his ilk would defend Crazy Pat to the death.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@gene108:
Don’t agree with a single word of your comment. Not one. We are from different political planets, and will just leave it at that.
Ellyn
I call him Matthew INcontinetti.
Hogeye Grex
and therefore the perfect thing for the Republican Party to base its national strategy on for the next twenty years.