Populist Right Rising
What happened to the Age of Obama?
Glancing over the New York Times Book Review Sunday, one finds three of the top four non-fiction best-sellers were written by conservatives—columnist Michelle Malkin, talk-show host Mark Levin and Fox News contributor Dick Morris.
At No. 10, in its 40th week on the list, is Bill O'Reilly's memoir.
No. 1 best-seller in paperback: Glenn Beck's Common Sense.
Moreover, the altarpiece of the transformational presidency, universal health insurance, is on life support, as huge crowds pour into town hall meetings to denounce it. Responding to the protests, the Obamaites have dumped the end-of-life counselors (aka "Death Panels") and declared the government option expendable.
But what are we to make of these "evil-mongers" of Harry Reid's depiction, these "mobs" of "thugs" organized by K Street lobbyists and "right-wing extremists" who engage in "un-American" activity at town hall meetings? Surely, all Americans must detest them.
To the contrary. According to a Pew poll, by 61 percent to 34 percent, Americans think the protesters are behaving properly. Gallup found that by 34 percent to 21 percent of Americans identify with them. For these folks at the town hall meetings are not overprivileged Ivy League brats seizing campus buildings and holding the dean hostage. They look and talk just like them.
What President Obama is losing is not the far right but the center of the country. Nor is this the first time liberals have misread America.
During the 1968 Democratic convention, liberals sided with the antiwar demonstrators in Grant Park. And the country sided with the Chicago cops who went into the park and gave them a good thrashing.
In 1969, the national press was writing that President Nixon must yield to the hundreds of thousands ringing the White House. Nixon went on national TV to call on the Silent Majority to stand by him.
They did, for four years.
One recalls Sen. Ed Muskie blurting out, after being crushed in the Florida primary by George Wallace, that he didn't know there were that many racists in Florida. That was the end of Ed. And in the fall, the Floridians flooded to Nixon, who did not insult them.
After Nixon rolled up his 49-state triumph, Pauline Kael, movie critic at The New Yorker, is said to have expressed disbelief: "I don't know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him."
George H.W. Bush never saw the rebellion of 1992 coming and watched Ross Perot waltz off with a third of his 1988 voters.
The anger in Middle America today looks much like what erupted in the NAFTA debate of 1993 and the amnesty debate of 2007.
The difference: Republican leaders stood with Washington then, for NAFTA and amnesty. This time, the party leaders are with the people, and should do the people's will.
Seven months into the Age of Obama, the GOP has been given an opportunity to regain the allegiance of the voters John McCain lost with his embrace of NAFTA and amnesty, and his dash to Washington to convince Republicans to give Hank Paulson $700 billion to bail out Wall Street.
For these protesters are not so much being drawn to the GOP as being driven to it. The manic assaults by Democrats and liberal commentators and columnists on the protesters as "un-American," "birthers," "racists," "mobs" and "evil-mongers" has enraged and united them and cost Obama much of his support in Middle America.
Does the left not realize that, while four in five Republicans say the protesters are behaving appropriately, 64 percent of moderates and 40 percent of Democrats agree with those Republicans?
We are also learning that Republicans have not been hurt by their opposition to the stimulus bill or cap-and-trade. The country has come to agree with the GOP.
Nor was the party hurt when, by four to one, its senators voted against Ms. Affirmative Action, Sonia Sotomayor. Nor was it hurt by standing with Sgt. Crowley when Obama rushed to denounce the Cambridge cop for acting "stupidly" in arresting the Harvard professor who got in his face. Obama's support among Africans-Americans remains solid. His support among the white working and middle class is sinking.
Increasingly, Obama is being perceived as a man of the left and Republicans as the bulwark against a lurch to the left. Democrats may denounce Republicans as the Party of "No"—but the nation seems to be saying "Yes" to the Party of "No."
In his new memoir, Encounters, conservative scholar Dr. Paul Gottfried writes of a 1993 gathering, hosted by this writer, where libertarian legend Murray Rothbard, columnist Sam Francis and that founding father of postwar conservatism, Dr. Russell Kirk, went at it over the role of the populist right in the conservative movement.
Though they vehemently disagreed, each man represented an essential element of a center-right coalition. As for the protesters, surely Thomas Jefferson was more right than Harry Reid, when he wrote to James Madison, "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
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Entries(RSS)
In order for a populist uprising to have any effect, we must first remove the Republican party, the sole purpose of which (besides serving rich people and politicians) is to capture and defuse populist uprisings.
Dr. Wilson, (and you know all of this, can say it better than I so indulge me but just for a second)
We can never remove the Republican Party. What must be done, and this is to take place outside of political parties, is to inculcate an understanding of place, community and family. Any supposed "conservative movement" is inherently the antithesis of what a conservative understanding of things, tradition, is about.
Jared Taylor spoke at Clemson a few years ago and I attended. The "conservative" group on campus had invited Taylor to speak as a response to the efforts of that jerk president Barker after the off campus black face party. I thought it was a bold move by the campus conservatives to invite Taylor and the room was packed. Taylor spoke at some length about some very serious issues and it was a delight to see enlightened young females called down for attempting to make "public statements".
The left had defined itself in their critique of Taylor and their desire to make statements but what was most troubling was the feedback I took in from the undergraduate "conservatives". Few, if any, knew Russell Kirk but they knew Rand. If, if any, understood the Agrarians but they knew George Will.(apologies to all for including the two in a sentence) If, if any, had any "ground up" respect for their culture or their communities but what I did get big thumbs up on was individually derived positions on free exchange, natural rights, and a whole host of "market" conservative positions.
As I spoke to these undergraduates, inquiring as I do about "where are you from", the names of small towns across South Carolina came at me in droves. "I know those towns", I said fulling knowing that NAFTA and GATT had buried most of those towns. As I pressed them on the impact of free exchange/trade on their towns there was a massive disconnect. These people, my fellow Southerners, could not understand what the principles espoused by what they considered "conservative" had actually done to their towns and communities. They could not come to admit that supposed "conservative" ideas put to action had hurt their families and they seemed to be thoroughly individual on these matters.
If there is going to be a real change (not that I enjoy change, being the reactionary that I am) there must be suffering. We are not at that point and until we get to that point, a position where people are fully angered by what has been done to their homes and families in the name of cheap shirts and rational individual choice making there will not a populist uprising, no party will be the answer politically. The neo-cons are waiting and watching. They do not like this populism we are seeing and they will corrupt it as soon as the chance presents itself.
McCallum
Poor Buchanan. Still shilling for the corrupt and repudiated GOP. It comes THIS close to being almost touching.
No doubt Randall.
McCallum
"Glancing over the New York Times Book Review Sunday, one finds three of the top four non-fiction best-sellers were written by conservatives—columnist Michelle Malkin, talk-show host Mark Levin and Fox News contributor Dick Morris.
At No. 10, in its 40th week on the list, is Bill O’Reilly’s memoir."
Pat, the real problem is that these authors can pen their brainless dribble and have it gobbled up by self-identifying conservatives.
Even more depressing: that any literate person is interested in Bill O'Reilly's memoir.
To think enough proles are reading his memoir to keep it on the best-seller list for forty weeks is even more frightening.
McCallum is right on. A monster such as this one, a political party created by and for the most rich and powerful in the country, is probably too powerful to be destroyed. Its roots are deep. We can only hope to cut off the branches - the Joe Six-Packs of Middle America who are duped into supporting it and thinking it is the only reliable alternative to the Democrats.
The comments here are irrelevant because they are born of a hostility to PB because he speaks favorably of the GOP, not from a meaningful consideration what is happening in the nation. Political thinking that achieves anything must begin with things as they are. That's the way Pat thinks. The founding fathers, to the extent that they succeeded, did so because they knew that politics is the art of the possible and that compromise is distasteful but is sometimes necessary. If anything good is to become of the current turmoil, various groups and individuals must bury some of their differences in the interest of a larger purpose.
polemicscat,
Pat is much beloved in my home. He is treasured among my friends as well and I count his North Carolina campaign chairman (1992 campaign) as a very good friend.
I believe people find it odd that Pat would continue to have anything good to say about the GOP after the way the party has, essentially, crapped on him.
But there is a pivot of criticism in Pat's piece. Just what can you say for a "movement" that counts Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin and Dick Morris as their heros?
Not much of anything.
McCallum
I think it needs to be remembered that Pat tried to create a conservative alternative to the GOP when he ran on the Reform Party ticket in 2000, and received less than .5% of the vote for his efforts. He might reasonably have concluded that such third party ventures are impractical, and becoming more impractical all the time, given the way our campaign finance laws work. That was certainly the conclusion I drew, after doing all I could to help him win the Reform Party convention that year and then to help him win at least 5% of the national vote, which would have made the Reform Party eligible for federal matching funds in the future and helped create a viable third party.
I can't wait for Sarah Palin's book to be one of the best sellers on that list. Will she talk about her heretical form of Christianity, bringing witch doctor's to Alaska, and her loyalty to Israel, under Bill Kristol's mentorship? Pat's former magazine, The American Conservative, ran an article on the dumbing down of conservatism, naming the people that Pat calls conservatives as being responsible.
Right now, framing it best, PJB is politically schizophrenic. He should be attacking the very people he lauds. Until they are marginalized as the militarists that they are, always demanding more Empire at the cost of our liberties, the choice we make with political "conservatism" is militarism over traditional liberty. As there is no hope that the other party is any better, conservatives need to fight for genuine conservatism and not support Republican militarists as the lesser of two evils. Conservatives should support no politicians except those that allow for the possibility of peace and prosperity, not a police state and endless debt. Conservatives are sell outs if they accept any less and deserve repudiation.
Sam Francis would be writing some awfully wonderful stuff in these times.
Damn I miss Sam.
Of course he is in heaven eating liver and onions. (a dish I witnessed him eat at a Confederate Day breakfast in Raleigh some years ago)
McCallum
McCallum, Tom, and Todd,
Yes, my take on PJB is that he was the best conservative the GOP ever had, and they hated him for it.John MCCain told him and his followers they were no longer needed and he would buy the greyhound bus tickets for them to leave. Before that he was excluded from the Party convention podium because he was supposedly a "divider and not a uniter." The editor of The Sweetly Standard, Little Bill Kristol, has said the same or similar "I prefer McCain to Al Gore but would take Gore over Buchanan" etc. Bush II speech writer and little neo-con man, David Frum,even read aloud the names that need to be purged from the movement in his piece, 'Unpatriotic Conservatives.' The list is embarrassing, long, and growing. Clyde Wilson has testified to a lifetime of useful idiots being betrayed by the "elephant in our room". The business for anybody interested in conserving anything is not conducted by republicans. Pat, during more sober moments when his friends from within the party were all doing what they do best, covering their ass in the Tall grass, once recognized that his Party was like driving through parts of Detroit's burned out neighborhoods. I guess a man still needs to work. I admire Pat and always will, but so long as he urges his ffot soldiers to carry water for the elephants in the two ring circus that is Washington,D.C. I say " They are Big Critters and didn't conserve any water during the rainy season, let them go for their own water and some for the donkeys too."
" three of the top four non-fiction best-sellers were written by conservatives—columnist Michelle Malkin, talk-show host Mark Levin and Fox News contributor Dick Morris.
At No. 10, in its 40th week on the list, is Bill O’Reilly’s memoir.
No. 1 best-seller in paperback: Glenn Beck’s Common Sense."
Conservatives? Dick Morris is a conservative? Good Lord, Mr. Buchanan. I suggest you turn off your TV set and stop reading the New York Times. There's not a conservative in that list of neocons you mentioned.
If that gang of ninnies represent conservatism, I'll take mine rare.
robert,
I do not disagree with you. I suspect Pat enjoys jumping the fence a bit but he must know, as much as anyone, that if folks like Levin, Malkin, O'Reilly, etc are what pass for main stream conservatives then conservative means zero.
Now that the shiny newness has come off of globalization more than a few people are wising up to this concept of radical individualistic choice making. Dr Fleming wrote a piece in the magazine some years ago that was one of the darn near most interesting things I've ever read on the matter. He exposed the ideology of market/libertarian self whose basis for validity is found in purchasing power and he chased that point back to its origin. Of course Russell Kirk called this out back in the 50's, indirectly, when he answered a question concerning the greatest peril to the US should communism suddenly cease. His response was that rampant capitalism with a basis for value totally on consumption would be an even greater danger than communism since it was internal.
Levin, O'Reilly, and the like can not step outside of the market/libertarian/individual mode. Pat knows the culture and I also believes he knows those yahoos as well.
McCallum
Tom at #9. Why did Perot receive 15 per cent or so of the vote and PJB only 5 percent? The debacle of the Reform Party did not prove the uselessness of third parties. What it did was kill a threat to the Republicans.
#10 "As there is no hope that the other party is any better, conservatives need to fight for genuine conservatism and not support Republican militarists as the lesser of two evils. Conservatives should support no politicians except those that allow for the possibility of peace and prosperity, not a police state and endless debt. Conservatives are sell outs if they accept any less and deserve repudiation."
What course of action would you recommend for conservatives? Setting a nice table and expecting all the best people to come to supper doesn't seem to work.
The average American who is upset with the way things are going with Obama and the present Congress is not as refined in political philosophy as some who long for a perfect world. They buy the books by authors who don't make the cut as genuine conservatives. So what? That will always be the case with the average citizen.
That's what Pat knows.
#8 "I believe people find it odd that Pat would continue to have anything good to say about the GOP after the way the party has, essentially, crapped on him." Maybe Pat is thinking of something more important than his own hurt feelings.
Dr. Wilson,
What percent of the vote do you believe Buchanan would have garnered had he possessed Ross Perot's vast fortune?
"What course of action would you recommend for conservatives? Setting a nice table and expecting all the best people to come to supper doesn’t seem to work."
Sure it does, one can eat spaghetti off the floor or drink wine from paper cups and call it "dinner and wine" which is what folks like you want us to accept as a conservative dinner now days
until we can recover the silverware, crystal, linen cloths and bees wax candles. Yet there remain folks (a few, probably not many) who can still enjoy a real dinner and conversation. Attend their gatherings and tell the boys and girls who "buck and bite" that you have other plans.
Pat is thinking of something more important than his own hurt feelings."
Sure he is because Pat is a serious man, (more serious than Ross Perot will ever be)but he would serve the future of conservatives better by teaching, walking the Virginia woods on a snowy evening, or traveling with his wife while writing less, and saying more.
18 I hope you enjoy crying in your drinks and walking through snowy woods. You won't change the world that way, but you can enjoy blaming other people for the things that go wrong because you have washed your hands of any responsibility.
"You won’t change the world that way,"
That is true and as an anti-global localist I am proud of the fact that I have finally overcome that ambition.I would rather attempt to change myself,or influence my children, my family, community or parish --- The country I can know and love instead of some abstraction that I don't know and can not love. I don't particular like cold winds or long winters either but of all of God's creatures, conservatives more than any others should be men and women "acquainted with the night."
“What course of action would you recommend for conservatives?
How about demanding that they act as "American" conservatives, i.e., demanding the political system working as it was designed to work, with checks and balances, and not as a personality cult. The last eight years of "conservative" government saw the unitary executive theory become the guide post of conservatism. Harvey Mansfield, good Straussian conservative that he is, put this into layman's terms, "one man rule." This was the litmus test (along with incompetence for Bush's first choices, Miers and then Gonzalez, no doubt) for Republican Supreme Court appointments. This was done with the enthusiastic concurrence of "conservatives," such as anti-abortion activists, along with the suspension of habeas corpus. In the name of fighting terrorism, should we suspend habeas corpus in the case of anti-abortion "terrorists? So I suggest conservatives become activists for principle and good, constitutional government. As this will take a 180 degree turn for 99% of the Republican party, conservatives should withhold support for them and exert their energies in opposing bad policies, but from legitimate American principles. Who knows, maybe a "conservative" party, one espousing policies that bring a "Christian" perspective, one that recognizes the sinfulness of mankind, and therefore, the need for a system of checks and balance, without calling itself an exclusive "Christian" party. Otherwise, should a German be excused because they chose a Nazi over a Communist? Or vice versa? Until then, there are two important causes that conservatives should support. The first is a Constitutional amendment, with Tom Delay and W in mind, that would prohibit anyone born in Texas from holding any national political office, other than a non-leadership post in Congress, the other Constitutional amendment would be one prohibiting a Republican from ever holding the position of "Commander in Chief" ever again. Maybe then, Republicans will not be so tempted of being declared Emperor and will get down to the serious business of being a credible opposition party, as they used to be.
"What course of action would you recommend for conservatives?"
Here is one course of action: Conservatives – true, American Conservatives – must support truly Conservative candidates regardless of how they are smeared in the conservative and liberal establishment news media, and must reject un-Conservative policies and the people and parties that enact them, we must do so loudly and often, in conversation, in writing, and at the ballot box. That means *only* voting for true Conservatives and *never* voting for the lesser of two evils. It means having to vote Third Party more often than one would like. It means depriving the GOP of your vote – even if doing so will guarantee a far-left liberal Democrat win – until they adopt a truly Conservative agenda.
For myself, I registered Republican so I could cast a vote for Ron Paul in the last GOP primary. When it comes to a general election, I either leave the box blank or write in a Conservative. I never, ever vote for an establishment Republican.
In addition to promoting truly Conservative candidates, the point is to deprive the Republicans of Conservative votes and cost them elections so that they must embrace Conservatism to win again. Let me stress that I'm not saying that this will work - most conservatives are more concerned with talking tough, prancing about waving their flags and singing along to obnoxious pro-war corporate "country" music, but I cannot see any other way and my conscience is clean every time I leave the ballot box.
To # 22; and having a clean conscience may be the best we can do. Mine was clean the multiple times I voted for PJB and I bear no guilt for the last seventeen years. Note that Ron Paul was not born in Texas. On another note, I am sure we have all heard the new motto of the U.S. expressed verbally by Republican but I saw it on a license plate the other day: Nukom. Mass murder can be so liberating.
@23 Todd,
Note that neither George W. Bush was born in Texas
W saw daylight in New Haven,Connecticut.
Best regards,
Mark Depré.
Oh yes. There is something wrong with these authors Pat mentions. Yes yes those neoconservatives trying to trick decent folks with their "drivel". It's not OBama and Marxism that is the problem. It is that vast jewish banking conspiracy, the phony 9/11. YOu gonna have to take it rare.
#6, #13. "A monster such as this one, a political party created by and for the most rich and powerful in the country, is probably too powerful to be destroyed."
Goldman Saks liberals, Wall street millionaires liberals, Apple, Micorsoft, Cisco, Yahoo, Google liberals, Beverly Hills all liberals, Soros, Warren Buffett, GE. Movie Industry, Music industry, Publishing, TV networks etc etc.
To begrudge someone like Mark Levin a successful best seller, chief of staff to Ed Meese, betrays immense ignorance or more likely a vicious agenda to discredit anyone who is in Obama's way.
Of course you're right, jackbailey. Everyone here except you is obviously a secret Obama supporter. Now get on your little hobbyhorse and toddle back to FR.
Jefferson said something like, "All that is needed for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing."
My recommendation for conservative action is this:
Given the fact that creating a new political party by starting a third one has not worked well ---
1. Conservatives should take over the Republican party by working to get the good people in leadership positions. The advantage there is that the structure of the party is already in place with groups and workers in every State.
2. (This is the most important step) Once in control of the party mechanism, change the name of the party.
3. Along with the renaming, write a position paper and platform that would establish the principles that candidates --- running for office with the party support --- would have to embrace.
The time to make the move would be during terms in which citizens are especially unhappy with incumbents and the state of the nation.
#13. Yet all your posts amount to nothing. There are no beliefs, just putting others down whether they are columnists or posters. I looked your posts up, not one coherent obeservation or comment on any column here, none. Other than defeatism, hatred for everybody and Marxist inspired delusions on history. So hatred of Buchanan comes as no surprise.
My recollection is that Mr. Buchanan's vote was more like 1-2 per cent rather than 5. At any rate, cui bono? The Republican Party had a serious threat destroyed, leaving the field free for Bush/Cheney. The Reform party was the first real threat to the Republicans since George Wallace.
@24. Thanks, I stand corrected. I will expand that project to extend the prohibition to include Connecticut.
I probably represent a significant number of conservatives who are independent. Both parties, a hex on them both, are but two branches controlled by the same moneyed oligarchies on Wall Street. Proof: If Obama wanted to clean house and start all over to clean up the USA corrupt financial system (the source of political evil), why would he renominate Bernanke, a Bush nominee? McCain would have done the same.........two parties and the same damn result. You see it is a game.....you throw out some issues such as health care and few others to keep the 'boobs' occupied (nothing will really change after all the fussin and cussin) while the profiteering can continue unabated in Afghanistan, Iraq and shipping American jobs to China. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary", according to Mencken. As far as Pat Buchanan, he should align himself with Rona Paul rather than the establishment neo-con stooges such as Levin and O'Reilly.
Patrick Buchanan, whatever one thinks of his seemingly undying hope for the Republican Party, is above all an optimist who loves his country and who desperately wants to believe in the good of a large part of his compatriots. He naturally chooses the "conservative" half because it represents the more human and sane ideas. The problem is that a closer look reveals that much of "conservative" America is every bit as deracinated and deranged as its left-wing enemy with the only difference being the party they vote for and their occasional presence in church pews (or, these days, church stadium seats) on Sunday (or, these days, Saturday). American society is a society that has totally forgotten what real life, real communion and real spirituality mean and which has no true conception of divine ideals.
"American society is a society that has totally forgotten what real life, real communion and real spirituality mean and which has no true conception of divine ideals."
Well said Nicholas. Yet, the neo-cons are always appealling to our Protestant pride by saying we are the most religious of what is left of the West. I guess if you wear a cowboy hat and large belt buckle in Manhatten, you're a cowboy and if you tell everybody to be positive and get rich, you are a Christian. What about France?
It's remarkable how every PJB article now seems to spiral into this sort of debate: one side is content to eat from the floor and drink wine from paper cups for practicality's sake, and the other side claims victory by dining alone.
I think Toddard @22 summed it up pretty well. There are no silver bullets or political messiahs to be found. Yet, opportunities for improvement are everywhere, though we must be content changing the "world" that is right in front of us. This will not happen by storm but by night breezes.
As Gary Johnson advised the crowd at the Rally for the Republic, "Adopt a Republican". Or for the Southern Democrats in the group, why not adopt a Blue Dog?
There are more of us than many of you think, and even more with only thin scales covering their eyes. Doubling this number becomes important.
@34: Indeed, what about France? I suppose I'll leave that for another discussion, given my proclivity for rambling off-topic... but I will say that although the French tabernacle of sinners is much prettier aesthetically than its American counterpart, its cleavage from the House of God is also much clearer, and so the French mal-pensants in that sense have it easier in that there is no temptation to confound the two. I am perhaps too hard on my compatriots...
@35: My friend, that's just the point... adopting a child means taking him off the streets and giving him a good home. There is no nourishment to be had in raw politics. My parents are just beginning to convert to our side and it was as much through shared sips of local wines or imported beers and swallows of heart tender meat cuts as it was through discussions in which my bull-headedness stayed bullish (that's the wrong word, but poetically it fits here). It wasn't through campaigning or telepropaganda. Don't eat off the floor, but if you see someone trying to scrape good food off the floor, don't hesitate to invite him over for a nice dinner on porcelain and glass.
By the way, however, if you ARE alone, there is nothing wrong with sitting in the park and eating on a blanket while drinking the wine straight from the bottle.