This is now getting dangerously past the line of the occasional right wing blowhard fall victim to momentary hyperbole. We now have a major presidential candidate and now a former presidential candidate and veteran journalist essentially de-legitimizing all democrats and progressives in American society.
Over the past week, we’ve had a major party’s nominee suggest, implicitly and even explicitly, that the political opposition, if elected, is going to ignore the constitution and rule by fiat, that they are absolutely going to cheat in order to win the election, that they created a terrorist organization that is threatening the homeland, and that perhaps the only thing that can stop these demonic traitors is violence.
Folks, this is not going away. Not only is it not going away, I predict that more and more of the voices among the right will compete with each other to see who can outdo whom when it comes to propagating outrageous falsehoods. I don’t think it takes a particularly high level of intellect to see that we could end up with millions of people not only doubting the outcome of what are presumably free and fair elections, but inspired to correct the ‘mistake’ with force.
Now faced with almost certain defeat at the polls for the third consecutive time and confronted with the reality of unfavorable demographic shifts, the right wing in this country is attempting to use the only card they have left: they are basically trying to throw out the rule book. If they can’t win within the system, they will simply say that the system is rigged. They’re basically saying: we don’t care who the winner is.
It’s a not a very long step from “If the liberals win, it must be because they cheated” to “Liberals shouldn’t exist.” If this doesn’t terrify you, it should.
And of course, the model here is “leaderless resistance”. You don’t go to one of your followers and tell them “plant a bomb over here”. Instead you talk about how violence is sometimes necessary, and let the lone wolves draw their own conclusions. And then when a right-wing terrorist shoots up a school, you shrug your shoulders and piously proclaim that you had nothing to do with that, you never told anyone to shoot up a school.
The upside is that political violence of this sort will sour Americans on the right wing for a generation or more. If right wing terrorists really are revolting, the more they kill the more they turn the public against them.
The logic of political violence seems to be that the other side are cowards and if you attack them they’ll fold. But if you attack our side, that just makes us madder and more willing to fight.
Ascribing Buchanan’s words to the entire right seems a bit far-fetched since he doesn’t have much (or any?) of a following anymore and even back in the day only had a limited one.
If sitting Republican Congresspeople or state/national party officials started jumping off this cliff, that would be a different story. Even Trump’s comments on this point sit alone so far without Pence or his other campaign staff echoing them.
Every Republican now in office was elected under the system that Buchanan suggests is “fraudulent” and “rotten.”
At the very least, each GOP Governor, Senator, and US Representative has a moral obligation to answer the question: Do you stand with Buchanan, who said “there is something fraudulent about American democracy” and asked “When do we have our American Spring?”
And every radio or television host that fails to ask any GOP guest whether or not they stand with Buchanan, has failed in his or her basic obligation to the public.
(And PBS will be greatly at fault if they permit Buchanan to retain his soapbox on The McLaughlin Group. Realistically, I hold out no hope that Fox News will disavow his criminally irresponsible views.)
Most of the sitting republicans and congresspeople are saying nothing because they are trying to win close elections and they depend on like-minded voters to win re-election. In doing so, their passiveness and their muted responses are essentially encouraging people to come out and say outrageous things. This will continue. I think it’s not too long before Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, and even some of Trump’s surrogates begin saying similar things. Those who do won’t pay a political price because they’re not running for office and they already have a devoted following, and they’ve already probably written off any chances of Trump winning (fairly) in the general election. We will continue to hear a steady stream of outrageous lies, repeated over and over, and suggestions about what can be done to fix a ‘rigged’ election system.
Pat Buchanan is a big time supporter of Trump and Trump has not refused but encouraged his help.
And, please, Most of the right is voting for Trump, they are ascribing to his words by not jumping ship. So do not complain now that they did not expect that lying down with dogs is getting them fleas.
That is the problem, really. They do know better; but partisanship is leading them to normalize the current trickle down racism and ignorance seen in the Republican party nowadays. Before it was seen in some bottom dwellers of the party, now most are willing to vote for the rotting fish head that is controlling the republican body now.
But that’s the thing - no Congressperson realistically is going to say the same or back up Trump because it would undermine the legitimacy of their own election/re-election. Aside from the ridiculous claim in 2008 that Black Panthers were trying to intimidate voters or commit fraud just by standing unarmed outside of one particular polling site, even Fox News and the frothier at the mouth Republicans (outside of the usual tinfoil hat crowd) claim that the 2008 or 2012 presidential elections were rigged or stolen. Trump has a very self-interested reason to start the pre-excuses for his loss, but it’s not going to generate any traction in the Republican party as a whole. Particularly since so many of the Secretaries of State in the key swing states who certify their polling places and results are Republicans.
Trump himself is fanning these flames, if not outright adding a few logs to the fire. The latest bloviating from The Donald demonizing “The Media” is just another plank. “The system is rigged and the media are hiding this from you”. He’s trying to prevent the media from reporting what is actually going on, in the interests of “fairness”
It’s dangerous, extremely dangerous and I agree with you that anyone who is not actively pointing this fact out is pretty much going along with it.
IIRC, the Prague Spring was a reformist movement carried out by Czech communist leaders. I don’t think it was a protest movement at all (though the subsequent invasion was protested). The analogy doesn’t make much sense, since Buchanan seems to want the opposite of a Prague Spring (a popular revolt against elites, instead of one led by those elites).
I suspect he just throws it in there as a backhanded way to call Hillary a Communist.
I predict that theres going to be another okc type of bombing that’s going to be much worse with in the next 3- 10 years probably in an attempt to blame minorities and start a civil war
Which will have the reverse effect as usual among the public and government and usher an age of everything politically and societally that the bombers hate …
But they’re not really challenging Trump’s remarks either – that’s the problem.
We’ve already gone well beyond where anyone could have ever predicted. It’s not just Trump, either. The Tea Party republicans have been saying for years that Obama was a closet Muslim who sympathized with radical Islam and that the Democrats are going to take their guns. They’re just cranking up the volume now. I predict it won’t be long before other right wing journalists start saying similar things and whipping up rage among the right wing. Will it help them win elections? No, of course not. But it will polarize people and almost certainly encourage extremist rhetoric and behavior.
He might have done better with the Velvet Revolution. But still, the analogy holds fairly well if we think of it as a Czech-USSR issue, like the Britain-EU issue.
Contrary to what the OP is saying, though, Buchanan’s piece is against “the establishment” of both parties, not just Democrats and Progressives. He’s not saying the election will have been rigged if Hillary wins (in the way Trump is), he’s saying the entire process is controlled by "the establishment’ in such a way that the people’s voices aren’t really heard.
It seems to be a common refrain from the left (maybe more from the far left) that the US is no longer a democracy, but an oligarchy. That link is often cited on this MB. I think Buchanan’s piece is the right’s version of basically the same thing. Still, I’m not seeing Buchanan’s piece as a call to violence, but a prediction that people aren’t going to be happy with a process that gives the win to the Consummate Insider when so much of the country wanted an outsider. He’s predicting mass protests. He just doesn’t realize that the 60s are over.
Sure, because Trump is to some degree a latter day version of Buchanan, a ‘paleo-conservative’, though Trump is less orthodox about being a conservative at all. I don’t see much ‘ahah’ though in saying Buchanan is Trump friendly. The people wheeling out the fainting couch for this particular quote seem to assume ‘spring’ means violence, but that’s not a reasonable inference. The ‘spring’ movements in other countries were non-violent. They came to bad ends in most places, that’s a drawback to the analogy from Buchanan’s POV. But I don’t see how this particular rhetorical flourish is out of bounds at all.
And Trump’s core supporters are just as hostile to a lot of the elected GOP as they are to Democrats, been true all along. So also no ‘ahah’ that they are being illogical because they must think GOP elected officials aren’t corrupt…they do think so. Not the people planning to hold their noses and vote for Trump because they think Clinton is even worse, but the smaller group who positively like Trump.
The Arab Spring was not really peaceful in many places.
IMHO Pat is referring on what to do after Hillary is elected, since he also goes by the idea that the election will be rigged. (Really guys, statements like this one from Buchanan are not happening in a vacuum, the danger is there by inciting the worst unfounded fears among many Americans.) However, it also follows then that Pat is also talking about the eventual defeat, stalemate or dismissal of the revels. And that is more possible when one takes into account about what took place in Prague.
It goes into the back stabbing narrative they will keep going on after the election, even if real protests do not come that ugly narrative will continue in the conservative echo chambers.
But the reference was specifically to Egypt and Tunisia, where we saw large crowds of people peaceful demonstrating day after day.
If you read the whole piece that he wrote (I linked to it earlier), you’ll see that he’s not talking about a rigged election (as in the actual vote count in Nov), but the entire process of how we elect our leaders being controlled by “the elites” not only of both parties but “the media”, etc:
I have to agree that a call for _____ Spring is not a call for a violent revolution. It is a call for a government overthrow though. Now if that’s non-violent I can’t say it’s wrong if it has the support of the people. But if we’re talking about a Pat Buchanan idea I’d suggest thinking twice or more before even considering it.