Word: populistic
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...from Theodore Roosevelt to Catholic theology to the America First movement of the 1930s--the roots of Buchananism as a popular phenomenon lie much closer to home. Republican politicians who are looking for someone to blame for this spoiler in their midst should look in the mirror. Buchanan's populist demagoguery, his fatuous targeting of so-called elites, his pandering to white middle-class self-pity, his scapegoating of minority and outsider groups--all these are familiar themes of Republican rhetoric of recent years...
...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...
Last year in these pages some fool (well, it was me) predicted that the populist fever would dissipate now that the Republicans had gained control of Congress. The theory was that a popular 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...
From a makeshift stage before the Minuteman, Buchanan--who has used Mount Rushmore, the OK Corral and the Citadel as backdrops to his populist campaign--invoked the names of George Washington and other colonial heroes in railing against free-trade deals and the deployment of U.S. troops under United Nations' command...
...Goldman, Sachs...Greenspan" as if they were the Elders of Zion) is slyly anti-Semitic; he uses a tone of barroom xenophobia on "Jose," his multipurpose Mexican bashee. He says, "Listen, Mr. Hashimoto [the Japanese Prime Minister]," as if he meant "Mr. Tojo." Buchanan is almost as brilliant at populist bullying as George Wallace was in the days when the Alabaman ranted at "pointy-headed intellectuals who can't park their bicycles straight." After reviewing Buchanan's quotations over the years, even one who loathes political correctness and hate-speech codes is likely to start seeing their usefulness...