It’s Too Late to Disown Buchanan

Like a stain suddenly ruining the new carpet, the success of Pat Buchanan and his alarming snarl--xenophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic and racist--has sent the smug Republican family into a dither of accountability. “Who let that pit bull into the house and why wasn’t he housebroken?” they must be asking, as if Buchanan is someone else’s dog.

Although it is understandable why the party establishment would like to now dismiss Buchanan as a weird stray from somewhere in the netherworld of David Duke, it won’t work. This is not some mongrel outsider but rather a purebred from the kennels of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. For years, Republican leaders chortled happily as Buchanan barked at Democrats on CNN’s “Crossfire.”

Buchanan speaks for a good chunk of the party faithful who have been lured into the fold with a message of fear and hate and now demand to be heard. These are the folks who take seriously the charge that immigrants and uppity minorities are the source of all our problems.

Moderate Republicans who knew better went along with this madness. Don’t forget that it was the so-called moderate candidate Pete Wilson who first brought immigrant and welfare bashing into this year’s campaign. It’s too late for Republican leaders to say Buchanan’s not one of them.

Nor can the Republicans just kiss and make up come convention time. The splits are real, and Pat and his riders of the purple prose will be in San Diego in force to remind all America that the conservatives are at a moment of fatal choice.

Buchanan’s considerable presence embodies all of the logical contradictions that threaten to tear apart the Republican Party. There is an irreconcilable division between the pro-capitalist libertarian wing and the moralizing Christian Coalition crowd. The free market celebrated by some Republicans is the enemy of traditional values so dear to others.

It is unbridled capitalism that has destroyed the secure world that Buchanan recalls so fondly. Capitalism is an engine for change that by its nature creates economic insecurity, as well as opportunity, destroys established community as it expands internationally, assaults set patterns of taste and empowers consumers to purchase a variety of lifestyles, some quite bizarre. You cannot be both a free-trader and a protectionist, or be a libertarian and accept that government should enforce “traditional values.”

These differences were long papered over by a Republican leadership committed to tax breaks and government deregulation benefiting the wealthy. They needed the blue-collar votes of the social conservatives but expected to con those rubes out of implementing their wacky agenda.

That was the supreme gift of Ronald Reagan. He waxed nostalgic about traditional values but put those issues on the back burner and instead acted on the agenda of corporate America. He only got into politics after paid missionary service on behalf of General Electric. In his view, it was “morning in America” precisely because of those wonderful multinational corporations, and organized labor, environmentalists or government regulators should not be allowed to get in the way.

But supply-side economics did not produce the growth necessary to ameliorate tension between classes. These days even Reagan would find it difficult to convince a public frightened over its economic future that what’s good for companies like GE is automatically good for America.

Increasingly, voters who are socially conservative have come to recognize that economic insecurity is a more important threat to a family’s cohesion than the movies they watch, which remain Bob Dole’s obsession. Dole stumbled because, as he admits, he was unaware of the fear for the economic future that’s out there.

Buchanan, for all of his considerable faults, has exposed the irrelevancy of the “just say no to government” Republican program. Now candidates don’t even mention the much ballyhooed but vacuous “contract with America.” But scapegoating is not a workable alternative, and it is pathetic to witness the other Republican candidates attempting to steal Buchanan’s thunder. Indeed, Lamar Alexander’s recent pronouncements on immigration and welfare accomplish the impossible: a dumbing-down of the Buchanan message.

What the Republicans need is another Eisenhower who will reaffirm that progressive government programs catering to the economic and social needs of the people are essential to this nation’s stability and therefore worthy of bipartisan support. Barring the sudden emergence of such a candidate--say, Colin Powell--many moderate Republican voters will come to view Bill Clinton as the best choice they’ve got.