Trumped! A Lone Author's Attempt to Understand Mr. Trump and his Phenomina

Part III: The Post Reagan Battle

Reagan did something interesting to the GOP. He brow beat the Eastern Establishment, which doesn't exist anymore, into submission. George Bush was his Veep. The establishment thought it was cowing RR, but really, by making Bush his Veep, Reagan was cowing the EE.

Now after Reagan, the Eastern Establishment got its man, and Bush governed like an Eastern Establishment Republican. Example, he appointed the squish, David Souter at the suggestion of his CoS John Sununu by the way, but also Clarence Thomas. He won a war, but raised taxes. It was so schizophrenic at the time.

After Clinton beat Bush (I voted for Bill) the various factions in the GOP scrambled for control. The EE, represented in the House by Bob Michael, was shoved aside by Newt and the new generation of Republicans. These weren't the EE get along go along types. These came of age under Nixon and Reagan and came to the House with tons of policy ideas. That was they're thing, I was one of them, Rubio and Cruz are too.

These confronted Bob Dole, old hand of the senate. A deal maker with no fixed ideas really. But he knew how to get things done.

Into this storm, first in '92 and then in '96 for real came Patrick J, Buchanan. The author learned his politics watching Pat, Mort, Jack and Fred on the McLaughlin Group. Pat knew how to make waves. He was a Reagan man, a Nixon man, he wrote the intro to Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative.

Pat looked at politics in the 90's. felt betrayed by Bush, but didn't like the futurism, free trade and internationalism of Newt and co. Dole was a mush and beneath contempt.

Pat made some big waves in 1996. He was crushed eventually, by Bob Dole, who lost the election of course. Both the EE and Buchananism were gone and for the next 15 years or so Newt and his brand of policy-wonkish internationalism ran the GOP. Rubio and Cruz were its last vestiges.

There's a bit of Patrick J. Buchanan in Donald Trump. He certainly rejects the elites. He has no use for internationalism. Whatever Mr. Trump thinks, and I don't believe he really thinks anything, the GOP voters have rejected Cruz, Rubio, and my brand of conservative politics.