CONSERVATIVE VOTES, LIBERAL VICTORIES: Why the Right Has Failed

Despite vast popular support, argues Buchanan, conservatism has fallen prey to pusillanimity in its own ranks and to malign liberal institutions. ""We have nothing to lose by confrontation politics""; somebody should come right out and talk tough about college graduates who don't respect business, commissars who eat our homegrown grain, the leviathan welfare state, the press monopoly by pro-Hanoi media like CBS, and the horrors of ""forced integration."" The book proposes governmental austerity and personal sacrifice, along with corporate tax breaks. The GOP is gravely warned of third-party dangers if it doesn't catch up with the Little People. Buchanan's pretense that this is a brave new manifesto is starched with no passionate belief in the rehash. Instead, there's a synthetic tone that Americans have come to expect from Presidential addresses--in fact, Buchanan was a Nixon speechwriter from 1969 to the end (he thinks Nixon ""tilted"" too much toward black people) and now works for that ""press monopoly"" citadel, the New York Times. Buchanan's self-proclaimed constituency does indeed exist, but won't it feel insulted by another round of magisterial cliches, ending with, ""Things need saying that are not being said""?