Trump, Buchanan, and @KevinNR

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Gormogons :

Trump, Buchanan, and @KevinNR

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Confucius, Œc. Vol.

 

So National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson wrote an acute piece on some of the continuities between Donald Trump’s supporters and those of Pat Buchanan in 1996 (there’s probably a link to Perot in ’92, but his appeal was more technocratic and less splenetic). The resentful psychology of a man trying to prove his manhood and needing scapegoat for his undeserved situation Kevin draws is acute, and indeed was very much the case with the Buchanan campaign. For you kids who came in late and missed the opéra bouffe of the ’90s, here is a piece which I couldn’t find anywhere on the internet, but which, fortunately, was in the bottom of my file drawer. (We used to use paper, kids. I know, lulz.)

 

It’s dated and specific, and I don’t even know if the man himself would agree with all of it these days, but for your edification (and entertainment—there are some good lines and the writing’s characteristically deft)…

Stupid and Contagious

P.J. O’Rourke

Rolling Stone

April 18, 1996