"More is now required of us than to put down our thoughts
in writing," declaimed Jeff Flake in his oration against President Trump,
just before he announced he will be quitting the Senate.
Though
he had lifted the title of his August anti-Trump polemic, "Conscience of a
Conservative," from Barry Goldwater, Jeff Flake is no Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater
took on the GOP establishment in the primaries, voted against the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, defiantly declared, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is
no vice," and then went down to defeat battling to the end after the
assassination of JFK made LBJ invincible.
The
real "Mr. Conservative" was a true profile in courage.
Flake,
with only 18 percent approval in Arizona, decided to pack it in rather than get
waxed in his own primary. With Falstaff, Flake appears to believe that
"discretion is the better part of valor."
Sen.
Bob Corker is another summertime soldier calling on colleagues to stand and
fight Trump while he retires to Tennessee.
It's
no wonder the establishment is viewed with such derision.
Flake
calls Trump "dangerous to our democracy." But the real threat Trump
represents is to the GOP establishment's control of the party's agenda and the
party's destiny.
U.S.
politics have indeed been coarsened, with Trump playing a lead role. Yet,
beneath the savagery of the uncivil war in the party lies more than personal
insults and personality clashes.
This
is a struggle about policy, about the future. And Trump is president because he
read the party and the country right, while the Bush-McCain Republican
establishment had lost touch with both.
How
could the Beltway GOP not see that its defining policies — open borders,
amnesty, free trade globalism, compulsive military intervention in foreign
lands for ideological ends — were alienating its coalition?
What
had a quarter century of Bushite free trade produced? About $12 trillion in
trade deficits, $4 trillion with China alone, a loss of 55,000 plants and 6
million manufacturing jobs.
We
imported goods "Made in China," while exporting our future.
U.S.
elites made China great again, to where Beijing is now challenging our
strategic position and presence in Asia.
Could
Republicans not see the factories shutting down, or not understand why workers'
wages had failed to rise for decades?
What
did the democracy crusades "to end tyranny in our world" accomplish?
Thousands
of U.S. dead, tens of thousands of wounded, trillions of dollars sunk, and a
Mideast awash in blood from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, with
millions uprooted and homeless. Yet, still, the GOP establishment has not
repudiated the mindset that produced this.
With
the Cold War over for a quarter of a century, what is the case now for America,
$20 trillion in debt, going abroad in search of monsters to destroy?
Consider.
Bush-Obama "open borders" brought in tens of millions of Third World
peoples, legally and illegally, to rising resistance from Americans forced to
bear the economic and social costs.
What
was the GOP establishment's reply to the opposition to amnesty for illegals and
calls for a moratorium on legal immigration, to assimilate the tens of millions
already here?
To
call them nativists and parade their moral superiority.
Flake
and Corker are being beatified by the Beltway elites, and George W. Bush and
John McCain celebrated for their denunciations of Trumpism.
Yet
no two people are more responsible for the blunders of the post-Cold War era
than McCain and Bush.
About
which of half a dozen wars were they right?
Yesterday's
New York Times recognized Trump's triumph:
"Despite
the fervor of President Trump's Republican opponents, the president's brand of
hard-edged nationalism — with its gut-level cultural appeals and hard lines on
trade and immigration — is taking root within his adopted party."
Moreover,
a new question arises:
Can
the GOP establishment believe that if Trump falls, or they bring him down, they
will inherit the estate and be welcomed home like the Prodigal Son? Do they
believe their old agenda of open borders, amnesty, free trade globalism and
democracy-crusading can become America's agenda again?
Trumpism is not a detour, after which we can all get back on the
interstate to the New World Order.
For
though unpleasant, it is not unfair to say that if there was one desire common
to Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump voters, it was be rid of the
regime resting on top of all of us.
Should
Trump fall, and a restored establishment attempt to reimpose the old policies,
there will be a truly uncivil war in this country.
After
the Trumpian revolt, there is no going back. As that most American of writers,
Thomas Wolfe, put it, "You can't go home again."
Traditionalists
have been told that for years. Now it's the turn of the GOP establishment to
learn the truth as well.
Goldwater
lost badly, but the establishment that abandoned him never had its patrimony
restored. It was the leaders they abhorred, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, to
whom the future belonged.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's
White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided
America Forever."
