At Takimag, Jack Hunter and Dylan Hales are arguing that the Ron Paul model (anti-state rhetoric), as opposed to the Buchanan model (fighting the culture war), has the potential to “build the broadest coalitions” and “bear the most fruit in advancing Alt Right policies.” Apparently, this was a topic of considerable debate at the H.L. Mencken Club conference over the Halloween weekend.
Put me firmly in the Buchanan camp. This one is a no brainer. I voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 Republican primaries, but his campaign was an electoral fiasco. Although he raised millions of dollars over the internet, Paul didn’t win a single state. In contrast, Mike Huckabee won Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Iowa, West Virginia, and Kansas. If Fred Thompson wasn’t in the race, Huckabee would have won South Carolina. He got 41% of the vote in Virginia, 38% in Texas, 12.5% in Mississippi, 12.1% in North Carolina, 8.25% in Kentucky.
Huckabee’s paltry showing in the last five Southern states wasn’t representative of his actual support. McCain had already been crowned by the media as the inevitable nominee after his wins in South Carolina and Florida and his Super Tuesday victories in the North. If Huckabee had won in South Carolina, which he lost only because of Thompson, he would have had the momentum to rout McCain in the other Southern states where he was the favorite.
Huckster presented himself as the “values candidate.” He was the “cultural conservative” in the race. McCain was the hawkish, “tough on defense,” 9/11 conservative. Romney was the fiscal conservative businessman. Guiliani was the social liberal. Fred Thompson aspired to be the Southern candidate. Tancredo and Hunter divided the “seal the borders” constituency. Ron Paul was the anti-state, bring home the troops, “End the Fed” libertarian ideologue.
The only reason Ron Paul succeeded to the extent that he did is because he was the candidate of a broader populist coalition that swelled his support beyond his traditional libertarian base. Paleocons and White Nationalists (myself included) overwhelmingly supported his candidacy. Unfortunately, Paul was never able to gain traction on the issues that would have propelled his candidacy to victory. He spent far more time talking about monetary policy than immigration, identity, or abortion.
I still vividly remember the Huckabee campaign in Alabama. Huckster’s message was simple: “I am one of you. These other guys are not.” It was pure identity politics. It was over-the-top “implicit whiteness.” He played Sweet Home Alabama on his guitar and spoke with a Southern accent. He had BBQ and sweet tea at his events (almost exclusively crowds of White people). He exuded a friendly, small town, down home, soft spoken aura. Huckster vowed to fight the culture war on abortion and other issues. He even signed the Jeff Sessions/NumbersUSA immigration pledge before campaigning in the South. I was highly tempted to vote for him after that.
Ron Paul raised $34.5 million dollars. Huckabee only raised $16.1 million. Yet Mike Huckabee handily stomped Ron Paul in every Southern state. What’s even more telling is that Huckster, not McCain, was the Southern favorite. If White Southerners are all “Red State Fascists,” as Lew Rockwell claims, why were they so reticent about backing the McCain campaign? Even after Super Tuesday, Huck made a respectable showing in Virginia and Texas.
Huckabee was tarred and feathered as the “big government” candidate on FreeRepublic.com and other conservative websites for his deviations on trade policy. The pro-business GOP establishment relentlessly mocked him. They wanted a Romney vs. McCain primary. Huckster’s supporters were irate at the time and vowed not to support McCain in the general election. I suspect this played no small role in McCain going down in flames in Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina where White evangelicals are a significant portion of voters.
The 2008 Republican primaries clearly show that White Southerners care more about fighting the culture war at home than foreign policy or the relative size of government. Ron Paul’s anti-state rhetoric has far more appeal in the small Mountain West states like Montana and Wyoming than it does here. The majority of Whites dislike affirmative action. It is a winning issue in Blue States like California, Michigan, and Washington. Enforcing immigration laws is highly popular nationally. Most Alabamians prefer to deport all illegal aliens.
Where is the constituency for abolishing the Federal Reserve? Americans haven’t been highly motivated about monetary policy since the “Cross of Gold” days when the Populists fought against the gold standard. Cultural issues are passé for the GOP establishment, but not for the typical Republican voter, especially White Southerners. It is only media mavens who claim the culture wars are over. Gay marriage was defeated in Maine – that’s right, Maine – just the other day.
The Alternative Right would be foolish to swallow Ron Paul’s libertarian kool aid. It was a disaster in 2008. Paul significantly underperformed winning issues – bringing the troops home, ending abortion, enforcing immigration laws, abolishing affirmative action. He talked endlessly about libertarian abstractions – and lost. In contrast, winners like Huckabee and Obama appealed to the identities of their voters.
Obama was the black candidate to blacks, the non-White candidate to Hispanics and Asians, the post-Christian, interfaith candidate to Jews, and the postracial SWPL candidate to White liberals. He built a winning coalition out of cult-like following and identity politics. A successful Alternative Right candidate will have to mobilize the “implicit whiteness” of MARs voters. Ron Paul wasn’t able to do this. Mike Huckabee had a lot more success.
There is nothing wrong with the Pat Buchanan approach. He just had the misfortune of running twenty years too early when the damage done to America by free trade, imperialism, and third world immigration was still theoretical.
Fantastic essay HW!
I suspect that Hunter and Hales prefer the libertarian argument out of a mixture of cowardice and indifference. For one thing, it is possible to make the libertarian argument without confronting the false morality of politically correct liberalism, which cannot be done if one tries to defend traditional American notions of White identity and culture.
The biggest complaint I have with the libertarian argument is that it misses the mark. We have been in decline since the close of WWII because our civilization has been relentlessly deconstructed by a liberal (and Jewish) elite; the chicanery of the federal reserve is a mere side note by comparison.
I love Ron Paul because he’s one of the few that has been going after the Jew-run Federal Reserve for years (even though he would never say that). However “libertarianism” and his slavish devotion to Jewish “Austrian” “Economics” is not going to do much for White in the long term.
Buchanan is the man, he names the Jew on a regular basis.
The Jew run Fed is not a side note, it’s how the Jews have all that money to undermine our culture.
Huckabee is a nasty, mean little shit though and his Fag Tax (oops, I mean “Fair Tax”) is just another way to screw over the working class Whites to give more money to rich Jews. Huckabee just is not that smart.
But point taken, the culture war are still worth fighting.
On a related note, has anyone noticed that the biggest fag-enablers in the US just happen to be Jews? What’s up with that?
Huckabee was a fraud.
Alternative Right mass distribution channel:
http://news.freespeechproject.com/
New Right archives:
http://freespeechproject.com/
There is a much larger audience for traditional cultural values than there is for libertarianism.
HW you brought up some topics that I have spent a long time thinking about so if you’ll permit me to rant a bit, especially about Huckabee.
Huck is “implicitly white” and he represents what is still (barely) the majority in the USA – White, Protestant, middle class, socially conservative but relatively tolerant. These people are against killing their babies, are for natalism, big families, marriage and sexual restraint. They rightfully consider immigrants, especially third world illegal immigrants, to be not only lawbreakers but threatening their culture and values and even physical safety, not to mention their jobs and living standards. Huckabee is also a good politician because he promotes those values in a soft way that doesn’t scare moderate White women the way a Tancredo does.
Protestant Christianity is THE native culture of middle class White America, and while I know the WN/KMD blogosphere has been critical of the Puritans, I’d love to hear a workable alternative to this system – pro-natalist, excludes Jews, communitarian and collectivist in a way that can benefit the White community, and fully cognizant of the cultural and moral decay brought on by our enemies.
There are two major problems with the Huckabee/Republican types; first what I think is the main WN argument, that they are too non-racialist and too universalistic. Perhaps the most damaging part of this is the Israeli shilling and general Jew-worship, and while there is some of that inherent in Christianity and especially Protestantism, it’s most a modern, post-WWII issue. Read Luther’s “On Jews and their Lies” and tell me Protestantism is necessarily philo-semitic. The Jews are right to hate Christians, Christianity *is* anti-Judaism.
The other problem with the Huckabee/Republican type is their capitalist, free trade, rich-businessmen-first ideology. They provide zero protection for Whites against traitors like Bill Gates or Jack Welsh, neither of which would have time to blink between when they sold out their people to foreigners and when they cashed the check. These people seem to think it’s 1950 and the Commies are going to destroy America by giving everyone high paying union jobs. Most of it is simply ignorance of basic economics and geopolitics, but we have no “vanguard” to lead on economics because White politicians are so greedy and easy to bribe (I guess that’s the individualistic characteristic of Whites). We’re left with the very unsatisfactory economics of Ron Paul; he at least gets one major issue right (the Fed).
For reasons not relevant to this forum, I have a strong personal contempt for Huckabee himself however, I hope is is off the public stage as soon as possible. One reason to oppose him that is relevant to this forum is that he is a Jew ass-kissing extraordinaire, quite probably getting cash to shill for AIPAC. For someone like Huckabee to send White boys to fight and die for Jews half way around the world is a unforgivable sin.
If we can get a cultural and stylistic Huckabee with some pro-working and middle class White economic ideas – and NO JEWS – we’d have a great politician.
The media suddenly began heavily shilling for Huckabee to siphon off the support that otherwise would have gone to Romney. As I remember they were still hot for Guiliani when Romney began to emerge as the frontrunner. With Huckabee undercutting Romney’s support the R’s ended up with a resurrected McCain.
How McCain could have become the candidate after his complete disgrace and repudiation in trying to push for amnesty just goes to show how much influence the media has. The 2008 primary for both parties was an object lesson in how the media almost totally controls who is “in” and who is “out”.
I like Buchanan a lot and I think that he would have done much better in 2008 than when he ran back in the nineties. Still, I can’t help but think that he primarily appeals to older people. Younger people seem to prefer Ron Paul’s libertarian ideas.
Don’t forget that other group of MAR’s, those that voted for Perot in 92 and 96. They were implicitely white, pragmatic, resourceful, and nationalist. A good combo. Good people, though I never shared their enthusiasm for Perot.
Ron Paul did worse than Huckabee because the media wanted it that way.
You need to look at the media agenda, which is always the jew agenda.
As far as the zionist agenda goes Ron Paul was by far the most dangerous serious candidate running in 2008. That’s why he was taken down by the Jew Republic with that old newsletter story.
The jews ideal candidate was Giuliani, a neocon fanatic for both open borders and invading the world and a social liberal.
Next up was McCain, who secretly hates the religious right as much as your typical jew liberal.
The jews knew that Huckabee was a minor threat even if he somehow got the nomination. He had a record of being soft on immigration and he was all for the jew’s wars. Jewry could use his religion to manipulate him the same way they manipulated George W. Bush.
Huckabee’s function, along with McCain’s close friend Thompson, was to prevent Romney from getting the nomination.
Of the big four candidates (Giuliani, McCain, Huckabee, Romney) Romney was the one the jews liked the least.
Religion is the reason. There’s no more implicitly white religion than Mormonism. And the modern state of Israel has no special status in Mormon theology. But more important, jews hate Mormons. They hate their whiteness, they hate their virtue, and they especially hate the way Mormons act like white jews, networking and excluding non-Mormons from business.
A jew can’t trust a Mormon to sell out to jewry at the critical moment because he’s already sold himself to Mormonism.
That’s why Romney had to be taken out and replaced with either a typical fundamentalist jew tool or a complete whore like McCain.
Every major political movement has a variety of strains, divergent and even contradictory strains. I’m not going to bother choosing. I support the Paul Dynasty and I support Pat. In the heartbreaking event that I was forced by circumstance to choose between Paul and Pat, I would go for Pat. But why iron out every contradiction in the movement and force a rigid orthodoxy if we don’t have to?
Look at the left. They have Blacks and queers in the same tent and have pretended for decades that everybody’s getting along. And in the relatively rare event that the two prove at odds, they just blame an innocent third party for the problem and move on. This was a great riposte to that crap at TakiMag and I’m very disappointed that the best use the Menckenites had for their time was discussing how to most efficiently tear themselves apart.
“Huckster … signed the Jeff Sessions/NumbersUSA immigration pledge before campaigning in the South. I was highly tempted to vote for him after that.”
All of the Republican candidates were anti-immigration during the primaries. Most of them intended to flip-flop later. That’s exactly what McCain did, and Romney has also flipped flipped since the primary.
The real anti-immigration candidates like Tancredo never got any traction. I don’t think there are many votes to be had by taking an anti-immigration position. I know the polls say people are for it, but that doesn’t mean it’ll sway their votes.
Most Americans are against illegal immigration. The problem is that they are more concerned about other issues.
Fighting the culture war is a winner. Just look at affirmative action. It has gone down in Washington, California, and Michigan. Gay marriage was rejected by voters in Maine.
The Right’s problem isn’t its ostensible opposition to social liberalism. This is broadly popular even in the Blue States. It is the libertarian inspired economic platform.
It should be pointed out that Paul’s voters were much more intelligent, well educated and much younger than Huckabee’s were. Most of the Ron Paul supporters I know are bright college students. We need these kind of people for cadre formation much more than we need old hicks who get all their information from Fox News. Focusing on abortion or anything religious will scare these people away. We need to introduce racial thinking to this segment rather than ditch them in favor of the religious right demographic.
The Huckster benefited from a slobbering burst of positive media coverage that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Why are the Paul & Buchanan approaches being discussed as though they were somehow mutually exclusive? On the contrary, they could hardly be more complimentary.
For one thing, strongarm Federal meddling and intrusion into State affairs has been the biggest tool for the Left to impose their “values” on the rest of us. Brown v. Board. The school prayer cases. The “Civil Rights” Act. The Immigration Reform Act. Forced busing. Roe v. Wade. Lawrence v. Texas. And now the hate crimes law.
I agree that Buchanan is dealing with issues that are of critical important to the real America–and these are winning issues–but restoring constitutional order is not a trivial matter either. (Nor is the crashing dollar.) Perhaps the winning candidate is the one who takes up BOTH mantles!