{"id":126957,"date":"2017-05-09T23:59:47","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T03:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=126957"},"modified":"2017-05-10T00:34:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T04:34:44","slug":"before-bannon-there-was-buchanan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/before-bannon-there-was-buchanan-126957","title":{"rendered":"Before Bannon, There Was Buchanan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eleanor Clift – The Daily Beast<\/a><\/p>\n

The old keeper of the GOP\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s American First flame considers the man carrying that torch today.<\/em><\/p>\n

A conservative firebrand, Pat Buchanan worked in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, filling a role much like the one that Steve Bannon is in today.<\/p>\n

They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the true believers, the keepers of the flame. Two pugilistic Irish Catholics with radical and often objectionable ideas that drive establishment Republicans up the wall.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I never met the fellow,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan said when I floated the idea of comparing him to Bannon, the populist avatar in the Trump White House. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We come from different backgrounds and experiences,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, perhaps alluding to Bannon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stint in Hollywood and his messy personal life. But then Buchanan relented, giving the go-ahead to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153analogizing his situation to mine in the early seventies, sure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Buchanan understood the changing pulse of America, what he called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the silent majority,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when he helped Richard Nixon rebuild his political career after a devastating loss to John F. Kennedy. Once inside the White House, as Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speechwriter and top advisor, Buchanan had a direct line to the president.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do they want now, Buchanan?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nixon would say when faced with complaints from conservatives. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He (Nixon) said there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a rule in politics: You give the nuts 20 percent of what they want. I left the room thinking I was one of the 20 percent,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Nixon relied on Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rhetorical firepower to light up the base just as President Trump keeps Bannon close by in the West Wing to keep the Goldman Sachs alumnae at bay and to keep alive the anti-globalization economic nationalism that got him elected.<\/p>\n

After a period of media speculation last month that Bannon was on the way out, a casualty of the New York globalists in the West Wing, Bannon has had his resurgence and is evidently back in the good graces of his mercurial boss.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 100-day rally in Harrisburg, Penn. was vintage Bannon, hammering hard on the Washington elites and doubling down on jobs and trade and his promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing the right thing keeping Bannon there because he understands the full range of issues, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just populism\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trade and immigration and staying out of foreign wars,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan says.<\/p>\n

Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s big concern now? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get us into another war. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my real apprehension,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he told the Daily Beast. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A major war would consume the Trump administration, just as it did (George W.) Bush.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

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Nixon was a progressive Republican who looked to Buchanan to navigate the new political reality of Goldwater conservatism taking over the GOP, and the country moving right, with segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace getting up to 21 percent in the polls. Anti-war protesters battled the police and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153America love it or leave it\u00e2\u20ac\u009d workers in hard hats, exposing a cultural divide in urban America that Buchanan turned into political gold much the way Donald Trump found his sweet spot in blue-collar rural America.<\/p>\n

Bringing working class Northern Catholics together with Southern Protestants on a racially charged law-and-order, message carried Nixon to a 49-state reelection victory in 1972 with over 60 percent of the vote. Hard to believe today, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tricky Dick\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was one of our most popular presidents.<\/p>\n

Buchanan dealt with Nixon principally thru memos, all of which he has squirreled away in the basement of his McLean, Virginia home, and which form the basis of his new book, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s White House Wars,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in which he repeats his oft-stated belief that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Watergate break-in was Mickey Mouse. If he (Nixon) had handled it correctly, he would have rolled right through it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

There was illegal activity, though, and Nixon didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell the truth about what he knew and, of course, he taped himself. The week before Alexander Butterfield, a White House aide, testified about the existence of the taping system, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I sent him (Nixon) a memo telling him to burn the tapes. Burn them and fire (Special Prosecutor) Archibald Cox before he gets too big. There would have been a firestorm, but it would have been the last firestorm.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nixon ran Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advice by White House chief of staff Al Haig, who told him not to do it. It would have been obstruction of justice.<\/p>\n

Today, Bannon is up against what Buchanan calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wall Street Journal conservatives. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not upset by trade and factories moving out of the country, and those are the things that really catch Middle America by the gut.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The Goldman Sachs alums, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and Ivanka doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look like an economic nationalist,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he adds with a laugh. Buchanan likes Wilbur Ross at Commerce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard line on trade, the issue he says elected Trump.<\/p>\n

Buchanan was named White House Communications Director after Reagan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s landslide victory in 1984. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Reagan was one of us,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says, a movement conservative, so the battles were mainly with a State Department headed by George Schultz, a traditionalist and an internationalist. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They were very against me, but I had the President with me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he recalls.<\/p>\n

The only time Reagan got upset with the media is if Human Events or the National Review criticized him, says Buchanan. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He always thought of himself as the great leader of the movement. It was real and natural.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

On Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s watch, Reagan made the cover of Fortune as the ideal chief executive, a master delegator. Soon after, the Iran-Contra scandal broke, undermining the magazine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis and turning it into a punch line. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I never felt he was a great corporate executive, he was more of an inspirational leader\u00e2\u20ac\u201dyou get the guy below him to run things,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Buchanan.<\/p>\n

Buchanan left four months into the scandal as a new team headed by former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker took over in the White House. The political needs of a president evolve over time, but for now, Trump needs what Bannon brings, which is a visceral feel for the new politics popping all over the world. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what sold voters on Trump, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still hanging onto his words.<\/p>\n

These are the same America First issues Buchanan ran on in the nineties\u00e2\u20ac\u201dborder wall, immigration, and economic nationalism. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what carried him through those industrial states, and if he changes, the old blue wall will be back,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Buchanan. In the end, Trump has to deliver with factories coming back, jobs coming back, and new jobs in manufacturing\u00e2\u20ac\u201da re-industrialization of America, easy rhetorically and almost certain to prove impossible in reality.<\/p>\n

Read more at The Daily Beast…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By Eleanor Clift – The Daily Beast The old keeper of the GOP\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s American First flame considers the man carrying that torch today. A conservative firebrand, Pat Buchanan worked in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, filling a role much like the one that Steve Bannon is in today. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re … <\/p>\n

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