Word: buchananism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...which he has taken a stand and fought for votes on every major issue of the past half-century, even some supporters say they don't know what he stands for. It is a politician's worst nightmare: Dole's own internal polls show that voters know what Pat Buchanan believes in, what Phil Gramm would fight for. A senior adviser to the Dole campaign was brutal in his private assessment: "If you ask Dole today, 'What's your message?' he'll say, 'Tenth Amendment, family values, preserve, protect and defend.' He's got the mantra down--it just doesn...
Powell is, therefore, much more liberal than most Republican voters, mixing fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. Pat Buchanan has vowed to lead the conservatives out of the convention should Powell be nominated. Pete Wilson not so subtly called Dole "The best general" to lead Republicans back to the White House. Newt Gingrich questioned whether he should enter the race because he thinks that Powell would move the party in the wrong direction. The party could face another bitter civil war, like that between Gold-water and Rockefeller, should Powell actually throw his hat in the ring...
Here lies a fundamental challenge facing mainstream G.O.P. presidential candidates: the venerable reassurance that a rising tide lifts all boats grows problematic when half the boats seem to be (as Buchanan himself has put it) anchored to the bottom. And tributes to capitalism ring hollow if technological change is doing the anchoring. For no economic system more efficiently abets technological change than capitalism...
...Ronald Reagan, the basic economic problem was thought to be inefficiency: the slow growth and high inflation called stagflation. Reagan's prescription--cutting taxes and regulation--was a prescription for efficiency, for aggregate growth. Now growth is not the big problem. Yet the mainstream Republican prescription remains the same. Buchanan at least grasps this paradox. But, like other Republicans, he has trouble escaping it. Being a conservative, he is skeptical of both short-term equalizers like income redistribution and of pricey long-term schemes like federally funded schooling...
...middle-income wages remain sluggish and inequality keeps growing, economic populism could become a big political movement. But any Republicans who joined it would start with a handicap: "Republican economic populist" has long been considered a contradiction in terms. And Pat Buchanan provides no clear reason to change that judgment...