The Buchanan Accident
the weekly Standard The Buchanan Accident Political ideas have consequences. But political consequences don't always have ideas. Not very big ones, at least. Sometimes in politics things just...
...But, look: That's probably not going to happen anytime soon...
...There's the gee-whiz libertarian futurism of Steve Forbes, whose unconcern for cultural conservatism is barely disguised...
...the best qualified of the three to manage the roller-coaster politics of the presidency...
...Phil Gramm's campaign-and Pete Wilson's, for that matter-ran aground, unexpectedly, before the primaries even really began...
...And he plays that role with gusto, deliberately enraging and expanding the ranks of his enemies, and delighting (and isolating) his supporters in the process-a manner and strategy that have never once in history won an American presidential campaign...
...Those results will inevitably alter the already fragile, manic psychology of the campaign...
...In this year's presidential campaign, Democrats do not have much choice in the matter...
...And unless Lamar Alexander's calculated "just plain folks" routine soon wins better reviews from actual voters, Republicans are left only two other moods to choose from...
...In legislative terms, it could not be achieved by narrow Republican congressional majorities over the obstructionism of a Democratic White House...
...Dole isn't...
...Steve Forbes proves that...
...But is that because they suppose that President Buchanan might realistically accomplish something more about abortion or school prayer than could, say, President Dole...
...And so on...
...Doubtful...
...The revolution was over-promised...
...So what does this mean about the ideological coalition that not 15 months ago swept the Republican party to national majority status...
...Why on earth, then, would he drop out...
...He is also, at least by dint of experience in elective office (dare we utter such an "elitist" thought...
...The public reaction against Bill Clinton's feckless inconstancy now places a special premium on non-Clintonian "authenticity" in candidates for public office...
...Thus we have the field we've got...
...I'm the bad guy," Buchanan gleefully informs the New York Times...
...Buchanan, in particular, is a superb campaigner...
...Less complicated, more obvious factors have also worked to elevate "outsider" Republican candidacies this year...
...But in politics, accidents sometimes count just as much as big ideas...
...So Buchanan represents current conservatism's least practical, most romantic ultra temperament...
...And, oddly enough, a plurality in this latter category preferred Dole, not Buchanan...
...He can afford to go on...
...They are supporting him by wide margins: 48 percent of them in New Hampshire and 54 percent of them in Arizona...
...The tidal waves of partisan and ideological alignment in America-population shifts to the West and South, congressional retirements and redistricting, and liberalism's general exhaustion and unpopularity-still work in favor of the GOP Just the same, as the presidential race unfolds, there's no reason to think things won't get worse before they get better...
...Republican operatives and conservatives who prefer to win are pulling their hair with worry, and desperately hunting for a way to "clear the field" in favor of a candidate who could unite the party well in advance of November...
...Alas...
...Asked why they voted as they did, Republicans in the New Hampshire and Arizona primaries- all Republicans, not just religious conservatives-said they wanted a man who, more than anything else, would "stand up for his beliefs...
...And, truth be told, winning the race (or managing the race so as best to help the party beat Clinton) isn't an overriding Buchanan concern...
...A switch of just 1,000 or so votes in Louisiana and New Hampshire would have given those races to Phil Gramm and Bob Dole, which might have sharply shifted the campaign's momentum...
...It's in some significant measure an accident that it is this way...
...Republicans this year are voting not so much for any particular set of legislative proposals, in other words, but for a mood...
...Fewer still-a barely visible 4 percent-were primarily motivated by questions of "foreign trade...
...Its principal effect has been to boost the standing of Pat Buchanan, a man whose style and substance many American voters find more than a little unpleasant and spooky...
...It's a nerve-wracking spectacle for anyone who hopes for the defeat of the Clinton administration...
...Sometimes in politics things just happen, almost at random, products of unconnected choice and chance that only remotely involve The Issues...
...He doesn't need much money to continue...
...Senator Dole's is the conservatism with broadest Republican and national appeal...
...Early Republican primary results have been over-interpreted in our view, to conservatism's unwarranted disadvantage...
...The campaign is going very badly...
...There are many answers...
...Have big, radically different ideas gained sudden currency, ideas that threaten the conservative realignment...
...Unburdened by fund-raising requirements and legal spending limits, a reasonably competent wealthy person can go quite far, even in a presidential primary campaign...
...It's not clear, after all, that many of his ideas really are so "extreme" in the textbook sense of the word...
...Several plausible and attractive mainstream conservatives declined to make the presidential race this year...
...But Republicans do...
...Are we, though...
...He has a natural, voracious, and often frightening appetite for the farthest edges of acceptable public debate...
...On February 27, for example, Buchanan beat Bob Dole more than four to one among Arizonans who ranked immigration as the "most important issue...
...Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, the pundits argue: We are witnessing an eruption of economic populism at the Republican grassroots...
...Talent matters, as always...
...So they struggle against it, attempting to superimpose theoretical depth and practical logic on events that often aren't very deep or logical at all...
...On the other hand, we're not prepared to concede November's general election, either...
...We won't even try...
...His economic platform is a collection of phobias about foreign trade, immigration, and heartless corporations...
...Money matters, too...
...But more than a few people, in both parties, do...
...But only 10 percent of Arizona Republicans did rank immigration highest on the list of their concerns...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...He's the "bad guy," remember...
...This naturally unsettles the serious people who explain and practice politics for a living...
...And accidents have consequences, too...
...This magazine doesn't agree with some of those ideas...
...And so if "revolution" is what's needed, and "insiders" like Bob Dole haven't managed to produce it, why not Pat Buchanan or Steve Forbes...
...Religious conservatives probably like Buchanan for a simpler (though no less salient) reason: He is now the national political figure who voices their convictions with greatest passion and candor...
...The "revolutionary" rhetoric employed by Republican congressional candidates to such great effect in 1994 has worked to discredit American political orthodoxies of every stripe...
...Much of the current Republican morass could be long forgotten by then...
...The longer this battle continues, the weaker it will make the GOP's eventual nominee, and the more it will thus limit prospects for a November presidential outcome that might help seal the rightward realignment of American politics...
...And is there anything anyone can do to alter the current script and guarantee a happy ending...
...This year's Republican presidential race is a chaotic case in point...
...He has a core of committed supporters sufficient to keep him in the running for the rest of the year...
...Passion and candor matter a lot at the moment...
...Why, for that matter, should Pat Buchanan ever let another candidate beat him into silence...
...In Congress, and especially at the state level, the GOP's winning 1994 coalition still seems reasonably coherent...
...It has so far been a rancorous multi-candidate stalemate...
...Have forces that may fracture the Republican coalition been unleashed...
...One searches the exit polls in vain for evidence that economic populism has determined more than a tiny fraction of Republican primary votes this year...
...What is arguably "extreme" about Buchananism is Buchanan himself...
...Few of them have much to do with big ideas...
...So why, with such advantages, his candidacy should be proving so obviously feeble-why he should be deadlocked in the race for a major-party presidential nomination with two journalists-is an interesting question...
...People are voting for him...
...To date, Steve Forbes leads the race where delegates to the August Republican national convention are concerned...
...He is constitutionally opposed to the pieties that help make civil discourse civil...
...No one can predict how or when the Republican nomination will finally be resolved...
...And the stolid, decent, painfully inarticulate Republican orthodoxy of Robert Dole...
...By the time the next issue of this magazine appears, voters in South Carolina, the New England states, Colorado, Georgia, and New York will all have cast their ballots...
...And mainstream Republican conservatism, in particular, has been undermined in 1994's Washington aftermath...
...And Buchanan's is the most vivid and vigorously expressed mood in the field...
...And then there is workaday accident and happenstance...
...There is one, indisputably significant group of issue-driven Republicans for whom Pat Buchanan now holds special, vote-generating appeal: religious conservatives...
...American journalism now does its sober, professional best to discern the underlying political currents that have propelled Pat Buchanan's recent success...
...It didn't have to be this way...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 25
