My Amazon.com review of Pat Buchanan's Suicide of a Superpower

[scoobiedavis]

I gave it three stars because Buchanan was right about Republicans being an endangered species in the near future. Check it out here http://www.amazon.com/Suicide-Superpower-Will-America-Survive/product-reviews/0312579977/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_3?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addThreeStar and if you have an Amazon account, give it a thumbs up if you like it. Here's my review:

Buchanan Needs Some Cheese to Go with His Whine

Buchanan's book essentially is a confirmation of the book, The Emerging Democratic Majority by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira. Buchanan looks at the same demographic trends as Judis and Teixeira, and, to a Republican, it's a frightening sight. Buchanan writes on page 24, "The Democratic base is growing, and the Republican base is dying." Buchanan is right: demographic trends overwhelmingly favor the Democrats. For instance, if current population trends in Texas continue (and there is every indication that they will), Republicans will be blocked from the White House for the foreseeable future.

Buchanan, understandably, is alarmed by these trends. However, Buchanan himself deserves much of the blame for the Republicans painting themselves into this demographic corner. Buchanan was an advisor to both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Buchanan was the mastermind of the polarizing strategies Nixon and Reagan used to decrease working-class white support of the Democratic Party: Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's appeal to worst elements of Dixie. To summarize Buchanan's strategy: appeal to the reptilian cortex in order to pit poor whites against poor blacks--to keep them both down. During the 70's and 80's, this strategy worked well for the GOP when whites were about 90 percent of voters. Nixon became popular with large numbers of George Wallace voters. Similarly, Reagan regaled white working class audiences with fabricated stories of the "strapping young buck" who used his food stamps to buy T-bone steaks.

However, in the 21st century, this strategy is electoral poison. Race-baiting politicians like Buchanan, Haley Barbour, Paul Broun, and Trent Lott soon won't be politically viable even in the Old South. Buchanan bemoans the decreasing relevance of this type of politician. My view: good riddance to bad rubbish. It couldn't be happening to a more deserving group of people.

In chapter two, Buchanan mourns the "death of Christian America," citing survey research indicating that increasing numbers of Americans express no religious affiliation (Buchanan notes that this trend is even bigger among American under the age of thirty). While there are many reasons for the increasing secularization of Americans, much of the blame goes to the American Right. Since 1980, the Right has cynically tried to make dour bigots and benighted crackpots like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson the face of American Christianity. Here's what happened: many Americans have internalized the Right's view and have rejected Christianity as a result.

While Buchanan is correct about demographic trends, his dystopian predictions are wholly unwarranted. Buchanan takes the almost solipsistic view that since increasing numbers of Americans are rejecting his parochial worldview that it's a sign of national suicide. This is nonsense. In the preface, Buchanan asks the reader a question similar to one heard at recent Tea Party rallies: "What happened to the country we grew up in?" The answers: 1) We are now a country that no longer stomachs the activities of racist demagogues; 2) America is a country in which fundamentalist pseudo-science is becoming less popular; 3) In the future, American politicians will have to appeal to the logic centers of voters' brains, not their reptilian cortices; 4) American know-nothingism is on the decline; and 5) Cynical right-wing strategists like Buchanan have been hoist by their own petard. These trends make for a better and stronger America, not a weaker one. Let's celebrate!

[mike_c]

1. LOL-- I saw the words "Pat Buchanon's suicide" in the OP title...

...and my first thoughts were, um, not charitable. :rofl:

[rfranklin]

2. NIcely written and heartening as well...

Now, if it only wre an announcement of Buchanan's demise as noted above. But, perhaps, in a sense it is.

[scoobiedavis]

3. Thanks for the support

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

4. I don't know whether to thank you or pity you. On the one hand you took one

for the team reading this tripe. On the other I feel bad that you put yourself through that. :evilgrin:

[MisterP]

5. "logic centers" and "reptilian cortices" isn't real phraseology

[SpiralHawk]

6. "phraseology" isn't real wankerlogism

someone might well argue

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. thank you for your excellent review - I had just read Joan Walsh's review of the same book

link:

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/19/pat_buchanan_declares_defeat/singleton/

.

Strange with Pat Buchanan - when he would write about the folly of American Empire and the role of the neoconservatives I found myself in overwhelming agreement with him - more so than with any prominent Democratic Party leaders. When he writes about American intervention in the Middle East - I would almost think he was an enlightened soul. But his extreme borderline fascistic (perhaps not borderline) xenophobia in regards to Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe and America completely disabuses me of that notion.