The Rule-or-Ruin Republicans
By Pat Buchanan
March 22, 2016, 5:00 am
“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.
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.
Just for the record, I would like to add that while Senator Tom Coburn is Conservative on a lot of issues, he is opposed to 2nd amendment rights...
If Conservatives who want to keep their gun rights would bother to check Mr. Coburn's voting record, I don't think he would get much support.
UPDATE:
A former Pat Buchanan adviser has launched a petition that
threatens to launch a new political movement if the Republican Party fails to nominate
Donald Trump.
See more at: http://www.teaparty.org/3rd-party-vessel-prepped-shield-trump-150402/#sthash.hfC0HNCj.dpuf
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