Word: buchananism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Since Buchanan's campaign began to pick up steam over the summer, the mimicry has become more obvious. On July 11, Buchanan pledged in Des Moines, Iowa, to reduce "the confiscatory inheritance tax now imposed on American family farms"--a populist-sounding gloss on a measure that would benefit those who inherit between $600,000 and $5 million. Four days later, Gramm promised on CNN "to do something about inheritance taxes, which are now confiscatory." In September, Buchanan called for a rollback of congressional pensions in the wake of Senator Bob Packwood's resignation, only to be echoed by Lamar...
Listen closely to the other candidates, and it is easy to conclude that Buchanan has, in one sense, already won. When Bob Dole denounces Hollywood sleazemongers, when Phil Gramm's pollster tells him to talk more about "fair trade, not free trade," when Arlen Specter starts to peddle a flat tax and Lamar Alexander blasts congressional pensions, Buchanan gets to lean back in the rented van that drives through the north country of New Hampshire and revel in remaking the Republican Party in his own image. This has become the Buchanan Effect. "All the candidates are responding...
...going to take this party back to the days of Rockefeller Republicanism, because we aren't going to let you.'" He calls Dole and Gramm "leap-year conservatives" who shuttle to the right every four years but are squeamish moderates at heart. So this is the Buchanan Dilemma: Will red-meat conservatives who love Pat continue to support him right through the convention, even at the risk of helping re-elect a President they revile; or will they make a pragmatic decision to fall back and support the candidate with the best chance of winning...
Whatever role he finally plays--spoiler or kingmaker or king--Buchanan has already remodeled the tone and the substance of the G.O.P. race. Despite Census Bureau figures and polls that show flat wages are a central concern of most Americans, Buchanan is the only G.O.P. candidate to address the issue directly and with gusto. The left-wing Nation magazine calls Buchanan "the closest thing to a genuine populist in the 1996 race." The others seem to have found no way to talk about income inequality without offending their affluent base of supporters and campaign contributors. While Buchanan strikes a populist...
They may not feel it in their gut, but they see it in the polls, and Buchanan's rivals have grown increasingly brazen about grabbing his message and making it their own. It was Buchanan, with his infamous declaration of a "cultural war" during the Republican Convention in 1992, who paved the way for Dole's attack on Hollywood this year. Long before Gramm decided that ending affirmative action would be his first presidential act, Buchanan stood virtually alone against what he called "the whole rotten infrastructure of reverse discrimination...