The crisis of the GOP
http://www.wnd.com/images/BUCHANAN(COLOR)2.jpg
By: Patrick J. Buchanan
11/10/2005

With the rout of the Schwarzenegger initiatives, Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and Bush's free-fall in national polls on his job performance, credibility and character, the Republican Party is in imminent peril of losing the country.

Indeed, since 9-11, the party has indulged in willful self-delusion that it has become America's Party. The Bush triumph in 2004, talking heads brayed, settled the matter: Red State America has triumphed over Blue State America. The future belongs to us.

This was always hyperbole. Where Nixon and Reagan rolled up 49-state landslides in re-election runs, Bush won 31 states, losing every state north of the Potomac and east of Ohio, two of the three great industrial states of the Midwest, Michigan and Illinois, and was skunked on the Pacific rim. Had Kerry hammered him on trade and lost jobs in Ohio, Bush would be a one-term president.

What killed the first Bush presidency and is ruining the second is the abandonment of Reaganism and embrace of the twin heresies of neoconservatism and Big Government Conservatism, as preached by the ideologues at the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal.

Under Bush I, taxes were raised, funding for HUD and Education exploded, and a quota bill was signed under which small businesses, accused of race discrimination, were made to prove their innocence or be punished, in true Soviet fashion.

Under Bush II, social spending has exploded to levels LBJ might envy, foreign aid has been doubled, pork-at-every-meal has become the GOP diet of choice, surpluses have vanished and the deficit is soaring back toward 5 percent of GDP. Bill Clinton is starting to look like Barry Goldwater.

Both Bushes abandoned the economic patriotism that had put America and Americans first – for free-trade globalism. Result: the most massive trade deficits in U.S. history, the gutting of our industrial base, the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and the largest wealth transfer of all time, with technology, factories and high-tech and high-skilled jobs pouring out of America into Asia.

Working America and the middle class have been sacrificed on the high altar of this Moloch of Republican Free Trade. And how have our Chinese brethren reciprocated our magnanimity?

Both Bushes embraced the "open borders" immigration policy the Wall Street Journal has trumpeted for two decades. Result: We have 10 million to 15 million illegal aliens in our country, among whom gangs like the murderous Mara Salvatrucha are proliferating. Native-born Californian taxpayers are fleeing the Golden State, as Third World tax consumers pour in.

So great is the crisis on the Mexican border even the liberal Democratic governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared states of emergency. Meanwhile, 35,000 U.S. troops stand guard – on the border of South Korea.

The late editorial-page editor of the Journal, Robert Bartley, once said, "The nation-state is finished." He and his progeny have surely done their best to bring that about.

As the country we grew up in becomes unrecognizable, we still hear the Journal, that good and faithful servant of the U.S. Business Roundtable, warning us not to oppose open borders. Meanwhile, our very own Dr. Pangloss, Ben Wattenberg, warbles on about our being the "first universal nation" and, in echo of French Prime Minister Dominic de Villepin, burbles, "Isn't diversity wonderful!"

In foreign policy, Bush I was an internationalist out to build a "New World Order" after the Cold War. However, post-9/11, Bush II converted to a neoconservatism that calls for unilateral American intervention in the Middle East and the Islamic world to bring down dictators and establish democratic rule.

Thus, in March 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us and did not threaten us – to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Result: Shia and Kurds have been liberated from Saddam, but Iran has a new ally in southern Iraq, Osama has a new base camp in the Sunni Triangle, the Arab and Islamic world has been radicalized against the United States, and copy-cat killers of al-Qaida have been targeting our remaining allies in Europe and the Middle East: Spain, Britain, Egypt and Jordan. And, lest we forget, 2,055 Americans are dead and Walter Reed is filling up.

True to the neoconservative creed, Bush has launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.

Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.

When Ronald Reagan went home to California, his heirs said, "Goodbye to all that," and embraced Big Government conservatism, then neoconservatism. If they do not find their way home soon, to the principles of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, they will perish in the wildness into which they have led us all.

Link

man, he's got a way with words, that pat. as little as I agree with him on immigration (he just can't help coming off a little xenophobic when he drools about "third-world tax consumers," that's just ugly), he's a great writer. and he's come a long way since his beady-eyed performance in, what was it, the 94 republican convention?

anyway, yeah, I've been big on his republic-not-an-empire stuff, definitely. as far as right-wingers go he's the probably the one I find least unpalatable.

Oh sh1t, never mind, let the repuGs stew in their own juices.

To be fair, buchanan's been critical of the republican party and the bush administration for a fair time now. He's probably the biggest iraq war critic on the right and he's been pretty consistent about it.

The crisis of the GOP
http://www.wnd.com/images/BUCHANAN(COLOR)2.jpg
By: Patrick J. Buchanan
11/10/2005

With the rout of the Schwarzenegger initiatives, Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and Bush's free-fall in national polls on his job performance, credibility and character, the Republican Party is in imminent peril of losing the country.

Indeed, since 9-11, the party has indulged in willful self-delusion that it has become America's Party. The Bush triumph in 2004, talking heads brayed, settled the matter: Red State America has triumphed over Blue State America. The future belongs to us.

This was always hyperbole. Where Nixon and Reagan rolled up 49-state landslides in re-election runs, Bush won 31 states, losing every state north of the Potomac and east of Ohio, two of the three great industrial states of the Midwest, Michigan and Illinois, and was skunked on the Pacific rim. Had Kerry hammered him on trade and lost jobs in Ohio, Bush would be a one-term president.

What killed the first Bush presidency and is ruining the second is the abandonment of Reaganism and embrace of the twin heresies of conservatism and Big Government Conservatism, as preached by the ideologues at the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal.

Under Bush I, taxes were raised, funding for HUD and Education exploded, and a quota bill was signed under which small businesses, accused of race discrimination, were made to prove their innocence or be punished, in true Soviet fashion.

Under Bush II, social spending has exploded to levels LBJ might envy, foreign aid has been doubled, pork-at-every-meal has become the GOP diet of choice, surpluses have vanished and the deficit is soaring back toward 5 percent of GDP. Bill Clinton is starting to look like Barry Goldwater.

Both Bushes abandoned the economic patriotism that had put America and Americans first – for free-trade globalism. Result: the most massive trade deficits in U.S. history, the gutting of our industrial base, the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and the largest wealth transfer of all time, with technology, factories and high-tech and high-skilled jobs pouring out of America into Asia.

Working America and the middle class have been sacrificed on the high altar of this Moloch of Republican Free Trade. And how have our Chinese brethren reciprocated our magnanimity?

Both Bushes embraced the "open borders" immigration policy the Wall Street Journal has trumpeted for two decades. Result: We have 10 million to 15 million illegal aliens in our country, among whom gangs like the murderous Mara Salvatrucha are proliferating. Native-born Californian taxpayers are fleeing the Golden State, as Third World tax consumers pour in.

So great is the crisis on the Mexican border even the liberal Democratic governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared states of emergency. Meanwhile, 35,000 U.S. troops stand guard – on the border of South Korea.

The late editorial-page editor of the Journal, Robert Bartley, once said, "The nation-state is finished." He and his progeny have surely done their best to bring that about.

As the country we grew up in becomes unrecognizable, we still hear the Journal, that good and faithful servant of the U.S. Business Roundtable, warning us not to oppose open borders. Meanwhile, our very own Dr. Pangloss, Ben Wattenberg, warbles on about our being the "first universal nation" and, in echo of French Prime Minister Dominic de Villepin, burbles, "Isn't diversity wonderful!"

In foreign policy, Bush I was an internationalist out to build a "New World Order" after the Cold War. However, post-9/11, Bush II converted to a neocconservatismt calls for unilateral American intervention in the Middle East and the Islamic world to bring down dictators and establish democratic rule.

Thus, in March 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us and did not threaten us – to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Result: Shia and Kurds have been liberated from Saddam, but Iran has a new ally in southern Iraq, Osama has a new base camp in the Sunni Triangle, the Arab and Islamic world has been radicalized against the United States, and copy-cat killers of al-Qaida have been targeting our remaining allies in Europe and the Middle East: Spain, Britain, Egypt and Jordan. And, lest we forget, 2,055 Americans are dead and Walter Reed is filling up.

True to the neoconservative creed, Bush has launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.

Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.

When Ronald Reagan went home to California, his heirs said, "Goodbye to all that," and embraced Big Government conservatism, then neoconconservatismhey do not find their way home soon, to the principles of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, they will perish in the wildness into which they have led us all.

Link


The one thing i like about Pat.

He's an actual Conservative as opposed to a Neo Con ala Georgie.

He raises many good points. But he's still a crazy Xenophobic Nut

Yeah, he's a very smart xenophobic nut, so it's sorta scary like that.

The conservatives are really engaged in this soul-searching right now, I was reading today about the republican break in the House with the neocon budget cuts, where a lot of moderate republicans were breaking ranks with the administration because those cuts are just SO brutal to poor people. So the cuts failed in the house basically because of republican moderates. (Olympia snowe again was the big example they used.) dana Milbank was writing about how the demos were sorta gloating, and I wish they wouldn't -- this is a great time to extend an olive branch to the moderate repubs and get a bipartisan alliance against the freaky neocon right. Civilize the discourse and get it back to issues of governance rather than rhetoric and ideology.

Reaganomics didn't work, but we could blow our post-war nest egg while Reaganomics failed, and then the GOP could spend the next dozen years denying the the flop of supply-side economics and imperial militarism.  Forgive the second avian metaphor, but the chickens are now coming home to roost.  Clinton, our last old-school conservative president, helped the country recuperate somewhat from the Reagan debacle.  Then the GOP done p*ssed in the chili all over again!  They're out of money, out of lies, and just sort of twisting in the wind!

They're out of money, out of lies, and just sort of twisting in the wind!


They'll twist a lot more soon. The repubs are really starting to draw away from dubyah. Next year is an election year, they don't need to be associated with anyone as unpopular as the 'President'.

They'll twist a lot more soon. The repubs are really starting to draw away from dubyah. Next year is an election year, they don't need to be associated with anyone as unpopular as the 'President'.

But can they disassociate themselves from the entire federal government they ran...and ran into the ground?

But can they disassociate themselves from the entire federal government they ran...and ran into the ground?


I dare say the sight of the average voter isn't that good  ;D

Both Bushes abandoned the economic patriotism that had put America and Americans first – for free-trade globalism. Result: the most massive trade deficits in U.S. history, the gutting of our industrial base, the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and the largest wealth transfer of all time, with technology, factories and high-tech and high-skilled jobs pouring out of America into Asia.


And now the trade is the highest ever for a single month.  Thanks to most "republicans" and a few democrats in congress who passed CAFTA, it's going to get much worse over the next decade.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown with a few exceptions it sounds like Ol' Pat has been readsing Bernie Sanders' speaches (not to suggest plaigerism or anything like that).  Pat's xenophobia is very disturbing, and I do find it rather scary that Pat has seen the light.  Could this lead to a mass exodus of liberal/leftistist to Bush's cause? 


    NOT

pat's become rather popular among some folks on the left, which i think is probably misguided. much like the right has discovered their love for Christopher hitchens, but I think they'll find that outside of the iraq war, there's not much in his thinking for the right to support.

Yes, politics sometimes makes strange bedfellows, but given the divisions on what we euphamistically call "the left" it is heartening to see these fissues on what has been a monolithic right.

pat's become rather popular among some folks on the left, which i think is probably misguided. much like the right has discovered their love for Christopher hitchens, but I think they'll find that outside of the iraq war, there's not much in his thinking for the right to support.

Hitchens is a W-H-O-R-E who will go home with whomever will give him the most cash and gifts.  These days that's the  right-wing.  I'm a little embarrassed that I once liked that man, but what bugs me the most is that Hitchens wrote a book about George Orwell, and said "Orwell has always meant everything to me."  Hitchens doesn't even belong in the same room with the name George Orwell.  Hitchens doesn't even deserve to utter the name George Orwell...

yeah, hitchens irritates me too. it's funny though i think, didn't orwell go through a kinda weird political freakout late in life? i know aldous huxley was a pretty conservative guy, all gungho on the cold war and anti-soviet and stuff...

i tell ya, i heard this debate bw hitchens and james galloway, the labor-turned-independent MP who got a lot of attention to himself by telling british troops not to obey their orders in iraq -- and i thought they were BOTH irritating and unlikable. with hitchens i don't expect any better but i wish galloway would do a better job of articulating a conscientious antiwar position instead of making it all personal. i mean, what's the point of mocking hitchen's alleged alcoholism in a debate? it's just mean and petty.

i feel the same way about ward churchill. guy's a jerk, and he damages the antiwar position.

yeah, hitchens irritates me too. it's funny though i think, didn't orwell go through a kinda weird political freakout late in life? i know aldous huxley was a pretty conservative guy, all gungho on the cold war and anti-soviet and stuff...

i tell ya, i heard this debate bw hitchens and james galloway, the labor-turned-independent MP who got a lot of attention to himself by telling british troops not to obey their orders in iraq -- and i thought they were BOTH irritating and unlikable. with hitchens i don't expect any better but i wish galloway would do a better job of articulating a conscientious antiwar position instead of making it all personal. i mean, what's the point of mocking hitchen's alleged alcoholism in a debate? it's just mean and petty.

i feel the same way about ward churchill. guy's a jerk, and he damages the antiwar position.


Any thinker as complex as an Orwell or a Huxley is going to have duplicity and self-contradiction in places.  In the middle of the 20th Century the fight really was freedom versus tyranny.  I wouldn't call either Orwell or Huxley conservative, at least not for their culture and their times.  Orwell was only 46 when he died of tuberculosis.  We never had the pleasure of seeing what kind of an old man he would be and how he'd react to the political turmoil of the 1960s.  Huxley was about a decade older than Orwell, and from a much more elite background.  You might call him one of the forerunners of the counterculture.  Think of his experiments with psychedelics (The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell; The Island).
Orwell himself fought against Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War, but the closest analogue to Big Brother was Josef Stalin.  I said on a different thread that by the time a government is conducting mass arrests and suppressing freedom of expression, it doesn't matter whether it's called fascism or socialism.

The propaganda from the Bush Administration plays up the "War on Terror" as freedom versus tyranny tantamount to the liberal democracies versus Hitler and Stalin.  This a big lie...and a bad lie at that.  A cursory comparison of World War II and the "War on Terror" shows the former to be a stark threat to human liberty worldwide and the latter to be an imperialist ruse.  To be sure, some lefties will tell you WWII was also an imperialist ruse, and I a greet to a certain extent, but let's be reasonable.  The military and political might of Hitler and Stalin renders the thread of Osama a bit of a joke.

I know, I know, we were attacked on 9/11.  However, the full story on 9/11 has not been told.  I'm not asking anyone to agree with me here, and I certainly don't want to start an argument with no hope for conclusion, but I'm not convinced 9/11 was not wholley or partially an inside job.

When George Orwell spoke up against Soviet tyranny, the blitzkrieg was still in the rear view mirror and the political balance of world power was dangling.  When Hitchens rants about what a great man Dubya is for standing up to Saddam, he's cynical, vituperative, drunk, and looking for PR favors.

I saw the debate between Hitchens and Galloway myself and decided one form of hell would be getting stuck in an elevator with the two of them!
::)

I know, I know, we were attacked on 9/11.  However, the full story on 9/11 has not been told.  I'm not asking anyone to agree with me here, and I certainly don't want to start an argument with no hope for conclusion, but I'm not convinced 9/11 was not wholley or partially an inside job.


http://www.inthe00s.com/index.php/topic,14266.15.html

All the serious hinkiness about 9/11 is totally going to be this decade's biggest dirty secret, the new JFK assassination. But yeah, probably a matter for another thread, that one.

pat's become rather popular among some folks on the left, which i think is probably misguided.
That's because Pat's a socialist..A NATIONAL SOCIALIST!!!
:o

That's because Pat's a socialist..A NATIONAL SOCIALIST!!!
:o


yeah, the lines between left and right get a little confusing when we start talking about pat buchanan and christopher hitchens, eh?

i read somewhere the nazis adopted socialism for their rural government to srta placate the farmers and ruled their urban centers with an iron fist. funny about pat and the national socialists -- one of his more controversial stances was that the US should never have entered wwii, and let hitler's army and stalin's army bleed themselves to death. aaannnnnddddd of course, in that case the holocaust would have gone on unabated, but ole' pat never makes much hay over that.

lest we forget our real reasons for disliking pat. ugh!

Well, during WWII we were never a big supporter of saving Jews from the camps.  Ther is the "Hamburg" insident F/E. 

Well, during WWII we were never a big supporter of saving Jews from the camps.  Ther is the "Hamburg" insident F/E. 


hmm. i think it was a bit more complicated. there were people who didn't think it was happening, people who didn't think it was as bad as rumored, people who wanted to put a stop to it, and antisemites who basically supported hitler. america is a pretty complicated place. and there are a lot of things that do shame america -- like the ship full of jewish refugees that was turned away at the new york harbor -- but we did, along with the allies and the russians, liberate the camps and it was hard to do and a lot of americans died and we shouldn't lose sight of that. you know?

it was a big thing, they recently discovered there were plans to bomb the concentration camps, the allied intelligence people knew what was going on and considered bombing them basically to put a stop to it and put the people out of their misery, but they opted against it because they weren't militarily significant targets and it didn't seem quite humane to target civilians in that way, even if it was a special circumstance. i have to be honest with you, i'm torn about that. the suffering in those camps was so great, so inconceivable... i'm just glad i didn't have to be the one to make those kinds of decisions.

and anyway, that's why i find pat buchanan's facile talk -- let the russians and the germans kill each other -- so repugnant. it would have meant the utter annihilation of all the jews in europe.