BUCHANAN BOOK DECLARES: 'NO CONSERVATIVE PARTY LEFT IN WASHINGTON'

Drudge Report | August 23 2004

After warning about the "Death of the West," bestselling author and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan now declares: "There is no conservative party left in Washington."

Buchanan is set to launch his new work WHERE THE RIGHT WENT WRONG: How Neoconservatives Subverted The Reagan Revolution And Hijacked the Bush Presidency -- a work ripe with cutting observation and opinion.

RIGHT WENT WRONG is not set for release until September 1, but DRUDGE breaks the embargo on the book:

On Conservatives and Conservatism:

“There is no conservative party left in Washington. Conservative thinkers and writers who were to be the watchdogs of orthodoxy have been as vigilant in policing party deviations from principle as was Cardinal Law in collaring the predator-priests of the Boston archdiocese.” (Page 9)

“The Beltway Right has entered into a civil union with Big Brother.” (Page 176)

“Under the rubric of conservatism, the Republican party of Bush I and II has been reinventing itself into what conservatives would have once recognized as a Rockefeller party reciting Reaganite rhetoric.” (234)

“[A] civil war is going to break out inside the Republican Party along the old trench lines of the Goldwater-Rockefeller wars of the 1960s, a war for the heart and soul and future of the party for the new century.” (234)

On the Neoconservatives:

“[T]he boat people of the McGovern revolution.” (37)

“Kristol’s warning that neoconservatives could go to Kerry was an admission of what many have long recognized. The neoconservatives are not really conservatives at all. They are impostors and opportunists.” (250)

“Nine days after an attack on the United States, this tiny clique of intellectuals was telling the President of the United States...that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged publicly with a ‘decisive surrender’ to terrorism.” (48 )

On the Bush Doctrine:

“[A] prescription for permanent war for permanent peace, though wars are the death of republics.” (6)

The Bush National Security Strategy “is the imperial edict of a superpower out to exploit its present supremacy to make itself permanent Lord Protector of the universe.” (26)

“This is democratic imperialism. This will bleed, bankrupt and isolate this republic. This overthrows the wisdom of the Founding Fathers about what America should be all about.” (35)

On the War in Iraq:

“[L]istening to the neoconservatives, Bush invaded Iraq, united the Arab world against us, isolated us from Europe, and fulfilled to the letter bin Laden’s prophecy as to what we were about. We won the war in three weeks -- and we may have lost the Islamic world for a generation. (84)

“[i]f Iraq collapses in chaos and civil war, there will be a ferocious fight in this country over who misled us and who may have lied us, into war....into the dock will go the neoconservatives whose class project this was...” (236)

On the War on Terrorism:

“Terrorism is the price of empire. If we do not wish to pay it, we must give up the empire.” (237)

“America’s enemy in the Islamic world is not a state we can crush with sanctions or an enemy we can defeat with force of arms. The enemy is a cause, a movement, an idea.” (87)

“[T]errorism is not a nation, a regime, or an army. Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon fanatics, dictators and warriors have resorted to through history. If...war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means.” (89)

“We are not hated for who we are. We are hated for what we do. It is not our principles that have spawned pandemic hatred of America in the Islamic world. It is our policies.” (80)

“U.S. dominance of the Middle East is not the corrective to terror. It is a cause of terror. Were we not over there, the 9/11 terrorists would not have been over here.” (236)

“Often, terrorism succeeded in the 20th century, and, when it did, the ex-terrorists achieved power, glory and immortality, with streets, towns and cities named for them....America today recognizes every regime to come out of these wars where terrorism was a common tactic.” (123)

On Israel & the Middle East:

“The Sharon Plan is not a peace plan. It is a unilateral solution to be imposed by Israel....A Palestinian leader who signs on to this surrender of land and rights would be signing his death warrant.” (242)

On China-U.S. Collision:

“In Asia, China is the rising power, America the receding one.” (127)

“As China is the one nation with the size, population, ideology and power to contest the United States for hegemony in Asia, is war inevitable? “Answer: No more inevitable than was war between Germany and Great Britain in 1914.” (144)

On Bush “Free Trade” Policies:

“It is false to say President Bush presided over a ‘jobless recovery.’ His trade deficits have created many millions of jobs in China.” (167)

“Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of World Government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright shining lie.” (171)

Globalization “is the economic treason that dare not speak it name.” (173)

“The Republican Party has signed off on economic treason.” (8 )

On Bush-Republican Fiscal Policy:

“Bush has compiled a fiscal record of startling recklessness.” (175)

“There is no conservative party in Washington. There is a Democratic Party of tax-and-spend and a Republican Party of guns and butter and tax cuts, too. Washington is all accelerator, the brakes are gone.” (177)

“Like Thelma and Louise, Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff. And we are in the back seat.” (187)

“Alongside the Gingrich Republicans, Bill Clinton was Bob Taft.” (191)

On Congress & the Supreme Court:

“The dirty little secret is that Congress no longer wants the accountability that goes with the wielding of power.” (212)

“How did it happen that a republic born of a rebellion against a king and parliament we did not elect has fallen under a tyranny of judges we did not elect? How did we come to live under what Jefferson warned us would be ‘the despotism of an oligarchy’?” (217)

“Though our society is democratic, our government is not.” (217)

“The Left has found the Ho Chi Minh Trail around democracy...to impose its views and values upon our society without having to win elections or persuade elected legislators. (223)

On the Conservative Case for Bush:

“George W. Bush is a God-fearing and good man....He kept his commitment to cut taxes....He has revived an economy sinking into recession when he took office. He has chosen fine judges. His willingness to accept international abuse by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court show him to be a patriot who will not yield national sovereignty.” (251)

“If George Bush is reelected and the Senate that confirms new justices remains Republican, there is the chance...the curtain may be brought down on the court’s fifty-year run as battering ram of social revolution.” (252)

“There is simply nothing that [Kerry-led Democrat] party offers to the Right.” (252)

..until he is branded as an "unpatriotic bitter man who failed in his bid for Presidency"..

...of a Buchanan fan myself (he's actually getting a write-in vote from me this year), I'm looking forward to this book.

It's no surprise to many of us more conservative types that trouble is afoot within our perceived ranks.

There's a couple of lines in here that I found interesting:

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

Pat has always been one of my favorite paleocons. He's been a good critic of the republican party through the Gingrich "revolution" of the 90's and the post 9/11 shift into a neocon's wet-dream. I would not say that there is no conservative party anymore. Rather I think that it has gotten a lot smaller and less influential. There is an overall lack of principles today on both sides of the political spectrum, which is why neither side is at all satisfied with their current leadership.

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"The best part about hating people is that I never run out of great ideas."

~ Dogbert

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"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

The right can be broken up into many different factions. You have your southpark republicans, your social-conservatives, intellectual conservatives, capitalists, libertarians, classical liberals, etc. I didn't make up paleocon. It's short for paleoconservative, meaning someone of the old right, like Barry Goldwater. Neocons are among the worst in my opinion.

__________________
"The best part about hating people is that I never run out of great ideas."

~ Dogbert

__________________
"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)