Wanted: A Fighting Party
by Patrick J. Buchanan
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As was evident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, it is deja vu, 1961, all over again. We have a young, cool, witty, personable president—and an adoring press corps.
“I am Barack Obama,” the president introduced himself. “Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me. (Laughter and applause.) Apologies to the Fox table. (Laughter.)”
What is also evident is that, without its new superstar in the lineup, the Democratic Party is a second-division ball club. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are not terribly formidable. Last fall, the Congress they ran had an approval rating below Vice President Cheney.
Why then is the Republican Party agonizing publicly over what it is supposed to do? If history is any guide, the pendulum will swing back in 2010.
After all, in 1952, Eisenhower was elected in a more impressive victory than Obama’s, and ended the Korean War by June. And, in 1954, he lost both houses of Congress.
Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater by three times the margin of Obama’s victory. He got Medicare, Medicaid, voting rights, and a host of Great Society programs. And, in 1966, he lost 47 House seats.
Ronald Reagan won a 44-state landslide in 1980, cut tax rates—and proceeded to lose 26 sets in 1982.
Bill Clinton recaptured the presidency for his party in 1992 after 12 years of Republican rule. In 1994, he lost 52 seats and both houses of Congress.
Though, demographically, the nation is tilting toward the Party of Government, the GOP must remain the party of free enterprise, and should follow the counsel of Australia’s Robert Menzies, long ago:
“(T)he duty of an opposition … is to oppose selectively. No government is always wrong on everything. … The opposition must choose the ground on which it is to attack. To attack indiscriminately is to risk public opinion, which has a reserve of fairness not always understood.”
Rather than debating what the national party position should be on foreign policy, health care, education, or social issues—which the party will decide when it chooses a nominee in 2012—the GOP should focus now, and unite now, on what it will stand against.
Here the party has a good start. With the exception of Specter the Defector and the ladies from Maine, it united against the $800 billion stimulus bill. And as it is impossible to shovel out an added 6 percent of GDP in two years, without vast waste, fraud and abuse, this stimulus package is going to come back and bite Obama by 2010.
And, recall, in his address to Congress, Obama assigned Joe Biden to see to it there was no waste, fraud or abuse in spending the $800 billion: “And that’s why I’ve asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort—because nobody messes with Joe.”
Joe has been set up to take the fall.
The next place to take a stand is against “cap and trade.”
More and more Americans are coming to conclude, after the record cold temperatures in many cities this winter, that global warning is a crock—that there is no conclusive proof it is happening, no conclusive proof man is the cause, no conclusive proof it would be a calamity for us or the polar bears.
But cap and trade would mean a huge hike in the cost of energy for all Americans, the shutdown of fuel-efficient U.S. factories, and their replacement by dirtier and less fuel-efficient Chinese plants.
And we do know the agenda here is a vast transfer of wealth and power from U.S. citizens to government bureaucrats, and from the U.S. Government to global bureaucrats who will run the oversight and enforcement machinery set up by the Kyoto II conclave in Copenhagen.
A third issue on which Republicans ought to stand and fight is health care. For the end goal of Obamacare is the same end goal as Hillarycare: nationalization, bureaucrats deciding what care each of us shall receive, when we may receive it, and whether we even ought to have it.
If the Republican Party remains the party of the individual and the private sector, does it have any choice but to fight?
For if cap-and-trade passes, and Obamacare becomes law, the government share of GDP rises to European socialist levels, and, as we saw after the Great Society, there is no going back.
A party defines itself by what it stands for, and what it stands against. After the Bush era, the Republican Party has been given the opportunity to redeem and redefine itself—in opposition to a party and a president who are further left than any in American history.
A true conservative party would relish such an opportunity.
After all, the Goldwater young did not lie down and die after a defeat far more crushing than the one the party suffered last fall.
Is this Republican Party made of similar stuff?
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by John Seiler on 13 May 2009:
It’s touching that Pat still cares for the Party that cashiered him so many times. But there are some problems with his analysis.
For one, he didn’t mention the 2002 midterm election, in which the party in power, the GOP, regained control of the Senate and increased its House majority by 8 seats. Bush and the Republicans, of course, leveraged fear after 9/11 to gain the victory, warning that the Democrats were weak and would allow more terrorists attacks.
Obama in 2010 also has fear going for him: fear of the economy getting even worse. He may be able to keep pinning the Bush Depression on the Republicans for another election, maybe for his re-election bid in 2012 as well. After all, it was Republicans’ expensive wars and inflation to pay for them that were the major causes of the Bush Depression.
He’ll be helped by Republicans, who so far haven’t learned anything from losing in 2006 and 2008. Their latest commercial attacks Obama for closing Guantanamo, threatening that it could bring another 9/11. It begins with footage of the 9/11 attacks.
The GOP leaders seem to be hoping that another terrorist attack hits, so they can blame it on Obama and the Democrats. They’re still using the 2002 playbook for 2010.
Republicans are the Party of Torture and Depression. They’re tyrants and they deserve to keep losing and go out of business.
(Link to the Republican Guantanamo video, which is on their tax-funded congressional Web site: http://www.gop.gov/detainees
(Link to an article on the video with comments by Richard Clarke: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22268.html )
2 Comment by Mark Higdon on 13 May 2009:
It is only because this website continues to publish every essay by PJB about the future of the GOP that I repeat here–for the third time very recently–who cares?!!! To that sentiment, I add this one: Why should anyone care?
3 Comment by John Seiler on 14 May 2009:
#2. I’m reminded of how the first Prez Bush, during his amusing and losing re-election bid in 1992, came out one day and said: “Message: I care.”
Well, I care because it’s also amusing to watch the self-immolation of the GOP, a party whose main mission is to humiliate its own most loyal followers.
And to keep the laughs going, Cheney has crawled out from the woodwork to defend torture, with huzzahs from National Review — as Obama eggs them all on. Christopher Manion points out that the GOP seems determined to make its 2010 losses as big as possible.
Manion link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/026784.html#more
4 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 14 May 2009:
Pelosi’s backpedalling today was utterly laughable. BVlame Bush lite’s CIA for Ms.-leading Madam Speaker. Her Argentine Khazar tycoon hubby will gin up the spin machine to absolve her of all stupidity. Does anybody know Pelosi’s IQ?
5 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 14 May 2009:
@1 John
That video was pathetic with a capital P! Are GOP voters that stupid? Oh, forget I asked, it was a rhetorical question.
6 Comment by Mark Higdon on 14 May 2009:
@3 “Pelosi’s backpedalling (sic) today was utterly laughable.”
Well, in a grim sort of way.
Does anyone else suspect that–cosmetically, anyway–Pelosi was separated at birth from the late Heath Ledger’s Joker?
7 Comment by Ed Roberts on 15 May 2009:
“A true conservative party would relish such an opportunity……
Is this Republican Party made of similar stuff?”
Hmmm, looking for a fighting party? Don’t waste any time fooling along ‘mongst the republicans. They only know how to fight their own base and hos to send the sons and daughters of those who trust them into criminal assaults on civilian populations.
As much as I despise Cheny and his sock puppet, W, I am grateful for the one good thing they accomplished: they drove a stake through the heart of the GOP. The GOP is done for. Thank heaven for that, at least. They’ll be around to throw another election to Obama, then they’ll officially merge with the democrats as they have always longed to da anyway.
8 Comment by Ed Roberts on 15 May 2009:
“A true conservative party would relish such an opportunity……
Is this Republican Party made of similar stuff?”
Hmmm, looking for a fighting party? Don’t waste any time fooling along ‘mongst the republicans. They only know how to fight their own base and hos to send the sons and daughters of those who trust them into criminal assaults on civilian populations.
As much as I despise Cheny and his sock puppet, W, I am grateful for the one good thing they accomplished: they drove a stake through the heart of the GOP. The GOP is done for. Thank heaven for that, at least. They’ll be around to throw another election to Obama, then they’ll officially merge with the democrats as they have always longed to do anyway.
9 Comment by Robert Bruce on 17 May 2009:
Come on now people!!!!!!! Buchanan had it right when he said that the two parties were the two wings of the same bird of prey. The whole political system of the US is a joke, and a bad one at that. It is tag team politics as they say with the opposition party only pretending to care. The whole charade is like a good cop bad cop routine with the parties playing both roles depending on what special interest/racial group you are in. Ballot access laws are so biased towards the two major parties that any 3rd party has to use most of its war chest to just get on the ballot. You have two choices the way I see it: fight or flight. The only type of party that could even have the remotest chance of rallying a majority of Americans would have to have a facist party type organizational setup. Flags, marching songs, programs to help the poor, kids branches, hell even maybe uniforms and most importantly a clear cut political platform/agenda that allows for very little if any debate in intraparty politics. Of course this would all be a long shot, so the other choice flight might be the smarter of the two things to do. I would learn Spanish and hit Uruguay, Argentina, etc. Or if S America isn’t your thing try Asia. I know this is defeatist talk, but if you are expecting any real opposition to MArxist AMerica it isn’t coming from the GOP.
10 Comment by Ed Roberts on 18 May 2009:
“if you are expecting any real opposition to MArxist AMerica it isn’t coming from the GOP.”
Exactly right. Karl Marx was a huge fan of Lincoln and a guiding light of the early republican party. The GOP has always been a Marxist party underneath the makeup. To expect them to offer any resistance to Obama is laughable.
Obama is in office as a direct result of the efforts of the GOP. from their attempt to foist off the Marxist Rudy Giuliani as the candidate to their refusal to seat Paul delegates at the convention so that the Marxist McCain could be declared the candidate, verything the GOP bosses did during the campaign was aimed at handing Obama the Presidency.
The same GOP power structure did the same thing in ‘96 for Clinton. Nobody but a brain dead republican kool-aid drinker would have voted for Dronin’ Bobby Dole, but he was the perfect soft pitch to Clinton.