by Patrick J Buchanan – February 23, 2004

Sen. John Edwards did not win Wisconsin, but he closed a huge gap with John Kerry with astonishing speed in the final week.

The issue propelling Edwards was jobs, the lost jobs under George Bush, and Edwards’ attribution of blame for the losses on NAFTA and the trade deals for which John Kerry voted in Congress.

Edwards has plugged into an issue that could cost Bush his presidency. Indeed, Kerry’s sudden conversion into fiery critic of trade deals for which he himself voted suggests that he senses not only his vulnerability on Super Tuesday, but his opportunity in the fall.

by Patrick J Buchanan – February 18, 2004

Last week was an instructive one for the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Gregory Mankiw was battered by leaders of both parties, hoisted by John Kerry, abandoned by his own president and forced to recant his beliefs.

What had Professor Mankiw done? He had used the “Economic Report of the President” to tutor us in free-trade theory.

In that report, Mankiw had equated the outsourcing of customer call-center jobs to India with buying manufactured goods from abroad, and pronounced both to be natural and good. “When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically.”

– by Patrick J Buchanan – February 16, 2004

George W. Bush “betrayed us,” howled Al Gore.

“He played on our fear. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure, dangerous to our troops, an adventure that was preordained and planned before 9-11 ever happened.”

Hearing it, Gore’s rant seemed slanderous and demagogic. For though U.S. policy since Clinton had called for regime change in Iraq, there is no evidence, none, that Bush planned to invade prior to 9-11.

by Patrick J Buchanan – February 11, 2004

Most Americans yet believe President Bush did the right thing in ridding Iraq and the world of Saddam Hussein. Yet, how we were persuaded to go to war raises grave questions about the character and competence of those who led us into it.

As we now know, Iraq had no tie to Osama, no role in 9-11, no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction, no plans to attack us. Its people did not threaten us and did not want war with us.

by Patrick J Buchanan – February 9, 2004

“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” With that sentence in a letter to Sam Gompers of the AFL, denouncing the Boston police strike of 1919, Gov. Calvin Coolidge electrified a nation and found himself on the Republican ticket in 1920.

When Warren Harding collapsed and died in 1923, Silent Cal was president. His career, said a wag, showed signs of celestial intervention. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may not see it, but he has today a like opportunity to electrify conservatives and vault himself into contention for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

by Patrick J Buchanan – February 4, 2004

Napoleon III, Emperor of France, saw his opportunity.

With the United States sundered and convulsed in civil war, he would seize Mexico, impose a Catholic monarchy and block further expansion of the American republic.

In 1863, a French army marched into Mexico City. In 1864, Maximilian, the brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, was crowned Emperor of Mexico. The French empire had returned to North America a century after its expulsion in 1763.

by Patrick J Buchanan – February 2, 2004

With the demise of Howard Dean and the emergence of John Kerry, the White House has seen its big chance for a blowout on the scale of the Nixon and Reagan landslides slip away.

President Bush remains the winter-book favorite to win in 2004. Perhaps going away. After all, Kerry is a Massachusetts liberal who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, backs civil unions for homosexuals, voted to defend the infanticide known as partial-birth abortion and wants to raise the federal income taxes that George Bush lowered.