I came across this link on Facebook to an interview with Patrick Buchanan on Facebook, and it prompted some thoughts.

Populism’s Prophet: A Chat with Pat Buchanan

Buchanan is a smart guy, and I took a liking to Trump in 2016 when I first recognized how closely his agenda followed the 2010 Tea Party, and before that, Buchanan’s agenda. Not necessarily a 1:1 correspondence, but very close. There are interviews of Trump from the 1980s, articulating some of his trade policies even back then.

Looking back, I wonder how much Buchanan’s run for President in 1992 was responsible for some of the real trouble that we’re facing. I say this considering Trump’s agenda to be a very good thing, and “the backlash against Trump” as “the trouble we’re facing”.

In one sense Buchanan exposed “the trouble” as a policy option. The second was accidental.

Regarding Buchanan’s nationalism, vs George H.W. Bush’s internationalism — his policies challenged GHW Bush’s “new world order”. The elder Bush in 1990 did a remarkable thing, bringing 35 or so nations together in “Operation Desert Shield”, to oppose Saddam Hussein’s intervention in Kuwait. Perhaps Bush was able to do so by appealing to fear among the middle east nations — “join with me or Saddam may some day conquer you” — but in doing so, he set a pattern that the left has picked up on, and seemingly perfected, in the era of Covid. (“Wear a mask, or you will die”).

The accident was, his Primary challenge weakened Bush in the 1992 General Election, leading to Ross Perot entering the race. Perot won something like 19% of the popular vote, and maybe Electoral votes in one or two states, enabling Bill Clinton to gain the presidency with only 43% of the vote. I don’t know how much of that was due to a cause-and-effect, however.

Clinton himself was a longshot candidate. He finished third in Iowa — but he won New Hampshire. The media picked up on this, and Clinton became the media darling. He himself had been a long-term governor of Arkansas. He was a scoundrel, but more than that. He was intentionally evil.

Later investigations (primarily by Christopher Ruddy, but there were others) portrayed Clinton as having run the state the way a Mafia Don runs his family.

And he had Hillary, the Allinsky-ite, in tow. Together, they crafted the schemes that enriched them and perpetuated their ongoing political power. I believe that the fraud that is so evident in the election that we have just witnessed was modeled after, if not the actual brain-child of some Clinton associates in the Democrat party.

Trump has, in his brief four years, brought a severe challenge to the Clintonite scheming, mostly by functioning as an “anvil” (to the Clintonite “hammer”). Lord willing, Trump will continue as President, to investigate and root out the cancer that the Clintons brought (and exacerbated).