Will the
Oligarchs Kill Trump?
By Patrick J.
Buchanan
March 08,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- Narrow victories in the Kentucky caucuses and the
Louisiana primary, the largest states decided on
Saturday, have moved Donald Trump one step nearer to
the nomination.
Primaries
in Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho on March 8, and
in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North
Carolina on March 15, may prove decisive. If Marco
Rubio does not win his home state of Florida, he is
cooked, as is Gov. John Kasich if he does not win
Ohio.
Ted Cruz
already looks to be the last man between Trump and a
GOP nomination that has gone, in the last seven
elections, to George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W.
Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney.
All five of
those nominees since 1988 seem appalled by Trump's
triumphs, and only slightly less so by the Cruz
alternative.
Not in
memory has the leadership of a party been so out of
touch. The Republican rank and file are in revolt,
not only against the failures of their fathers but
the policies of their present rulers.
Some among
the GOP elites, who have waited patiently through
the Obama era to recapture control of U.S. foreign
policy, are now beside themselves with despair over
Trump's success.
Fully 116
members of the GOP's national security community,
many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have
signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is
nominated, they will all desert, and some will
defect -- to Hillary Clinton!
"Hillary is
the lesser evil, by a large margin," says Eliot
Cohen of the Bush II State Department. According to
Politico's Michael Crowley, Cohen helped line up
neocons to sign the "Dump-Trump" manifesto.
Another
signer, Robert Kagan, wailed in The Washington Post,
"The only choice will be to vote for Hillary
Clinton."
Are they
serious?
Victory for
Clinton would mean her remaking the Supreme Court,
killing all chances that Roe v. Wade could be
overturned, or that we could get another justice
like Antonin Scalia before 2021.
What are
these renegades and turncoats so anguished about?
Trump calls
the Iraq War many of them championed an historic
blunder. Trump says that, while a supporter of
Israel, he would be a "neutral" honest broker
between Israel and the Palestinians in peace
negotiations, as was Jimmy Carter at Camp David.
Trump says
he would "get along very well" with Vladimir Putin,
as Richard Nixon got along with Leonid Brezhnev and
Mao Zedong.
Trump would
launch no new crusades for democracy. He would not
oppose Russia bombing ISIS. He would build that wall
on the border. He would transfer from U.S. taxpayers
to rich allies more of the cost of defending
themselves.
Do not most
Americans agree with much of this?
Yet this
neocon ultimatum about deserting should the voters
nominate Trump testifies eloquently to their
loyalty.
With every
ex-president and ex-nominee repudiating Trump, and
foreign policy elites going rogue, the GOP hierarchy
is saying: We will cut Trump dead, just as the
Rockefeller-Romney crowd cut Barry Goldwater dead.
This is
pure my-way-or-the-highway politics.
But it
raises anew the question: Can the establishment stop
Trump?
Answer: It
is possible, and we shall know by midnight, March
15. If Trump loses Florida and Ohio, winner-take-all
primaries, he would likely fall short of the 1,237
delegates needed for nomination on the first ballot.
How could
the anti-Trump forces defeat him in Ohio, Florida
and Illinois? With the same tactics used to shrink
Trump's victory margins in Virginia, Louisiana and
Kentucky to well below what polls had predicted.
In every
primary upcoming, Trump is under a ceaseless barrage
of attack ads on radio, TV, cable and social media,
paid for by super PACs with hoards of cash funneled
in by oligarchs.
But Trump,
who is self-funding his campaign, has spent next to
nothing on ads answering these attacks, or promoting
himself or his issues. He has relied almost
exclusively on free media.
Yet no
amount of free media can match the shellfire falling
on him every hour of every day in every primary
state.
Our
Principles PAC, backed by Nebraska's billionaire
Ricketts family, has poured millions into trashing
Trump. American Future Fund is dumping $1.75 million
in Florida this week; Club for Growth $1.5 million.
Hedge-fund
billionaire Paul Singer is backing the Conservative
Solutions PAC, which has dumped millions into
anti-Trump ads and plans to spend more than $7
million between March 1 and 15, with $4 million of
that going into Florida. The super PAC pile-on is
unprecedented.
How well
Trump fares in Michigan and Mississippi, measured
against how well he was doing in polls last week,
will reveal just how successful super PAC savagery
has been in changing hearts and minds.
Can
millionaires and billionaires who back open borders,
mass immigration, globalization and the
disappearance of nation states into transnational
collectives overwhelm with their millions spent in
ads the patriotic movements that arose this year to
the wonderment of America and the world?
Has that
proud 18th century boast of Americans, "Here, sir,
the people rule!" given way to the rule of the
oligarchs?
Pat
Buchanan is a founding editor of The American
Conservative magazine, and the author of many books
including State of Emergency: The Third World
Invasion and Conquest of America .
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