Word: buchananism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...scapegoats and misuse patriotism for cheap political advantage. They're right. But do they by any chance remember the sneery majoritarianism of George Bush's campaign of 1988--the one all about saluting the flag and prison furloughs? Maybe they even remember back to 1968 and 1972, when Pat Buchanan helped Richard Nixon start this fine Republican tradition...
...sure, Buchanan's "anti-institutional" demagoguery represents a break from the Republican boiler plate of recent years in three ways. First, Buchanan targets the institutions of both Washington and Wall Street, whereas earlier Republican demagoguery restricted itself to attacking Washington. But you can't expect populism, once unleashed, to forever avoid its traditional (and, to many minds, logically more compelling) target. Second, Buchanan has turned up the heat. His blame game is more pointed and angry. But if you've been doing your best to keep popular resentments at a high simmer, your indignation is suspect when someone decides...
...delicious to hear Rush Limbaugh, of all people, explaining that Pat Buchanan is not a "Republican" at all--he's a "populist." And Rush evidently means this to be a criticism! Buchanan's populist demagoguery, deplorable as it is, has had the healthy effect of separating the Republicans from the populists, and of exposing the Republican Party's own populism as a sham. When institutions they and their traditional business allies control are at stake, it is suddenly "anti-American" to be "anti-institutional...
...anger built largely on amorphous complaints would be satisfied by largely symbolic solutions. The illusion of unhappiness would be addressed by the illusion of change. The Republican leadership must have thought so too, but they and I were wrong. The genie won't go back into the bottle. Pat Buchanan, now tearing apart the Republican Party, is the genie's revenge...
...Lane is wildly endearing: a tempestuous wife, a doting mother and every inch the great lady. The film gets less comic mileage, but more political kick, from the right-wing politician (Hackman) who is the butt of the film's genial jokes. He might be Pat Robertson or Pat Buchanan on a bad day. In the mistaken-identity dinner party that serves as the film's third act, it is his function to be enlightened--not to forgive the gay couple for any crime against nature but to realize that charm and devotion have their place in every family, every...