[BRIGADE] PJB: Can the MARs Save McCain?
Published: Fri, 10/03/08
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For the Cause, Linda
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Can the MARs Save McCain?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
John McCain may have just let slip his last best chance to be
president of the United States.
When he flew back to Washington to address the banking crisis,
McCain could have seized the hottest issue in America by taking the
side of his countrymen who were enraged by the Paulson Plan to bail
out a power elite whose greed and stupidity had caused a financial
disaster unequaled since the Crash of '29.
But rather than denounce the Bush-Paulson-Pelosi-Barney Frank plan
as a rip-off of taxpayers, lacerate Obama and Co. for bedding down
with the kleptocrats of Fannie Mae, and advancing his own McCain
plan, McCain played the establishment man. He sought modest
concessions for the Republican view, urged swift passage and left
town.
Then the House, in an astounding act of defiance, voted to kill the
bill, triggering a trillion-dollar run on Wall Street.
Working with Democrats rather than battling the establishment has
ever been McCain's way. And, undeniably, his deserved reputation
for bipartisanship helped him to get where he is.
He campaigns proudly on his capacity to work with liberals and has
McCain-Feingold, McCain-Lieberman and McCain-Kennedy to prove it.
But as George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford discovered, the politics of
compromise and consensus does not always produce the best result.
The tax hike of 1990 may have destroyed Bush I's presidency, and
Ford's choice of John Paul Stevens for the Supreme Court, who was
approved unanimously, helped propel the Ronald Reagan challenge.
Philosophically and culturally, we are a divided people. Across the
spectrum there are us-versus-them folks who see politics as a
zero-sum game between Middle America and a global elite. Below the
upper-income brackets and along the center-right are the folks the
late columnist Sam Francis, citing sociologist Donald Warren's 1976
study, called Middle American Radicals.
Nixon brought the "MARs" to national attention when, as David
Broder then wrote, the "breaking of the president" was underway in
October 1969. Nixon went on television and called for the Great
Silent Majority to stand with him against antiwar demonstrators and
rioters in the streets, and for "peace with honor" in Vietnam.
When TV anchors trashed Nixon's speech, he unleashed Spiro Agnew on
the establishment media.
No White House had ever before attacked the networks or national
press for ideological and political bias.
In a month, Nixon hit 68 percent approval, the apogee of his
presidency, and Agnew was the third most admired man in America.
Reagan, by opposing the surrender of the Panama Canal to a leftist
dictator, also rallied the MARs. He lost that battle, but his
consolation prize was the GOP nomination and the presidency.
In recent years, we have seen the MARs rise again and again in
roaring rebellion. But, invariably, when these rebellions occur,
John McCain may be found inside the castle walls.
In 2007, McCain rushed to Washington to support George Bush, Ted
Kennedy, Bill Clinton, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington
Post in the drive to grant amnesty to 12 million to 20 million
illegal aliens. A national firestorm killed the bill and almost
killed McCain's campaign.
A year earlier, a MARs uprising killed the Dubai ports deal.
The power elite was stunned by the explosion of outrage over the
leasing of six U.S. ports to Arab sheiks. Nationalism remains a
more potent force than globalism, and not only in America.
In Clinton's first term, McCain stood with the establishment for
NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and the Mexican bailout. Middle America
opposed them all.
In the past decade, the MARs have opposed free-trade deals, and
lost, but won virtually every referendum on gay marriage,
affirmative action or welfare for illegal aliens. Invariably, the
MARs are portrayed as bigots, nativists, xenophobes, protectionists
and isolationists, and their leaders as demagogues. In McCain's
words from 2000, they are "agents of intolerance."
This is fine if you wish to be beloved in this city, but it may be
a fatal impediment if you want to be president.
McCain's problem is that, in 2008, when his old press idolaters
have found a new favorite, these are the people who hold his key to
the presidency. They are the Democrats who voted against Barack
Obama by wide margins in Pennsylvania and Ohio and landslide
margins in West Virginia and Kentucky.
These Democrats can still win this race for John McCain. Many
admire his war record. But not only is he not one of them, he has
taken pride and pleasure in having been their great antagonist.
Could McCain win them back in five weeks? Perhaps. Is he willing to
do what is necessary to win them back? Probably not. It would go
against his instincts and his image of himself.
The issues that move these folks are not just the $700 billion
bailout of Gordon Gekko's comrades, but the invasion of America
from Mexico, the export of their jobs, factories and future to
Asia, and the gnawing fear that the country they grew up in is
being sacrificed for the benefit of an internationalist elite.
SOURCE:
http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/10/pjb-can-the-mars-save-mccain/