[BRIGADE] PJB: Populist Right Rising
Published: Tue, 08/18/09
Here's an update on the website: The site is rebuilt from the
ground up. Beautiful, clean code, finally it's error free and
validates XHTML Strict. The CSS still needs work but I'm not
freaking out over it. This week I'll add some new components --
permanent sections for weekly polls, Podcasts, books, videos, and
more. And I will set up the ability for you to post comments on the
content. I think you will be pleased.
As always, For the Cause -- Linda
PS -- Thanks to the hackers I decided it's time to focus more on
Pat's site, develop a new design [sort of a grunge look], and get
back into adding content that always made Buchanan.org one of the
most popular sites on the Net. So, bottom line is the hackers have
seriously pissed me off and now not only will you have a cooler
site to visit for PJB's articles -- there will be much more news
and opinion from my favorite writers, videographers and Podcasters.
It will be the stuff the Neocons do not want you to know. Stand by.
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Populist Right Rising
by Patrick J. Buchanan
August 18, 2009
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.
Culture of Corruption by Michelle Malkin FREE
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 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."
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/populist-right-rising-1857