By
Patrick Buchanan
“Things
reveal themselves passing away,” wrote W. B. Yeats.
Whatever
one may think of Donald Trump, his campaign has done us a service — exposing
the underbelly of a decaying establishment whose repudiation by America’s
silent majority is long overdue.
According
to The New York Times, super PACs of Trump’s GOP rivals, including PACs of
candidates who have dropped out, are raising and spending millions to destroy
the probable nominee.
Goals
of the anti-Trump conspirators: Manipulate the rules and steal the nomination
at Cleveland. Failing that, pull out all the stops and torpedo any Trump-led
ticket in the fall. Then blame Trump and his followers for the defeat, pick up
the pieces, and posture as saviors of the party they betrayed.
This
is vindictiveness of a high order.
It
brings to mind the fable of the “The Dog in the Manger,” the tale of the
snarling cur that, out of pure malice, kept the hungry oxen from the straw they
needed to eat.
Last
week came reports on another closed conclave of the “Never Trump” cabal at the
Army and Navy Club in D.C. Apparently, William Kristol circulated a memo
detailing how to rob Trump of the nomination, even if he finishes first in
states, votes and delegates.
Should
Trump win on the first ballot, Kristol’s fallback position is to create a third
party and recruit a conservative to run as its nominee.
Purpose:
Have this rump party siphon off enough conservative votes to sink Trump and
give the presidency to Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose policies are more
congenial to the neocons and Kristol’s Weekly Standard.
Among
the candidates Kristol is reportedly proposing are ex-Governor Rick Perry of
Texas and former Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, both respected conservatives.
Kristol
contends a third-party conservative candidate can win.
He
can’t be serious. It is absurd to think Gov. Perry, whose poll numbers were so
low that he dropped out of the race last September without winning a single
primary, caucus, or even a delegate, could capture the White House on a
third-party ticket.
Perry
would not even be assured of winning his home state.
Trump
and Perry would split the conservative vote in the Lone Star State and deliver
its 36 electoral votes to Clinton, thus assuring a second Clinton presidency.
Does Perry want that as his legacy?
As
for Coburn, he is not nationally known. But his name on the ballot would take
votes, one-for-one, from the Republican nominee.
How
would that advance the causes for which Tom Coburn has devoted all of his
public life?
Indeed,
if the supreme imperative for Kristol and the “Never Trump” conservatives is to
defeat him, they have become de facto allies of George Soros and MoveOn.org,
Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street — and the party of Harry Reid, Chuck
Schumer and Hillary Clinton.
However,
if the oligarchs, neocons and Trump-loathers, having failed to stop him in
Cleveland, collude to destroy the GOP ticket in the fall, they have a chance of
succeeding. And Clinton’s super PACs would surely be delighted to contribute to
that cause.
But,
again, what will they have accomplished?
Do
they think that Republicans who stay loyal to the ticket will not see them for
the selfish, rule-or-ruin, wrecking crew they have become? Do they think that
if a Trump-led ticket is defeated, they will be restored to the positions of
power and preeminence that a majority of their fellow Republicans have voted to
strip away from them?
The
Beltway has to come to terms with reality. It has not only lost the country; it
has lost the party. It is not only these elites themselves who have been
repudiated; it is their ideas and their agenda.
The
American people want their borders secured, the invasion stopped, the
manufacturing plants brought back and an end to the conscription of our best
and bravest to fight wars dreamed up in the tax-exempt think tanks of
neoconservatives.
Trump
is winning because he speaks for the people. Look at those crowds.
Establishment
pundits are now wailing that they have gotten the message, that they understand
that they have not been listening.
But still, they refuse to act on this recognition.
But still, they refuse to act on this recognition.
In
June of 1978, Gov. Jerry Brown of California, who had fought tirelessly against
Proposition 13, which would slash property taxes across California, did a
U-turn when it passed in a landslide. And Brown himself implemented the tax
cuts he had opposed.
He
got the message and acted on it.
One
sees none of this flexibility in the Beltway establishment, none of this
acceptance of the new realities, only obduracy.
Donald
Trump is only the messenger.
If
these conservative defectors from a ticket led by Trump collude with Democrats,
by running a third party candidate to siphon off Trump’s votes, they may
succeed.
But
they delude themselves if they think they will have solved the problem of their
own irrelevance, or that they have a future.
The
party will survive. They won’t. (Watchman comment: after reading Kristol's quote I want to puke, what an effete, elitist snob.)
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