{"id":1963961,"date":"2023-07-04T12:09:02","date_gmt":"2023-07-04T16:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pat-buchanans-1992-culture-war-speech-hits-even-harder-today-greatest-man-who-never-became-president\/"},"modified":"2023-07-04T12:12:09","modified_gmt":"2023-07-04T16:12:09","slug":"pat-buchanans-1992-culture-war-speech-hits-even-harder-today-greatest-man-who-never-became-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pat-buchanans-1992-culture-war-speech-hits-even-harder-today-greatest-man-who-never-became-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Buchanan&#8217;s 1992 speech on the &#8216;Culture War&#8217; remains relevant: The &#8216;Greatest Man Who Never Became President&#8217;."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpat-buchanans-1992-culture-war-speech-hits-even-harder-today-greatest-man-who-never-became-president%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1963961&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Pat Buchanan&#8217;s 1992 &#8216;Culture War&#8217; Speech Hits Even Harder Today: &#8216;Greatest Man Who Never Became President&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>Thirty-one years ago, Pat Buchanan was to Republicans what Ralph Nader was to Democrats in 2000: the man who cost his party the White House.<\/p>\n<p>Buchanan, a former Nixon aide and political pundit, launched a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pat-buchanans-1992-culture-war-speech-hits-even-harder-today-greatest-man-who-never-became-president\/\" title=\"Pat Buchanan's 1992 speech on the 'Culture War' remains relevant: The 'Greatest Man Who Never Became President'.\">long-shot primary challenge<\/a> against sitting President George H.W. Bush on the grounds Bush was insufficiently culturally conservative and didn\u2019t care enough about keeping American jobs in America. The campaign was initially considered a joke \u2014 until Buchanan scored 38 percent in the New Hampshire primary to Bush\u2019s 53 percent.<\/p>\n<p>While Buchanan didn\u2019t win any of the primaries, he continued to poll respectably. He was already a pariah by the time he arrived at the Republican National Convention; any kind of primary challenge against an incumbent president that picks up some momentum is almost always the kiss of death for the incumbent: Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter lost their re-election bids after challenges from Ronald Reagan and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/chappaquiddick-cnn-tweet-kennedys\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Teddy Kennedy<\/a>, respectively, and Lyndon Johnson simply threw in the towel after anti-Vietnam candidate Eugene McCarthy garnered a shockingly high 42 percent in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, announcing he was giving up his re-election bid.<\/p>\n<p>And then, Buchanan delivered what became known as the \u201cCulture War\u201d speech at the Republican National Convention in Houston. For those watching at home, you could almost hear the jaws of the collective Republican establishment dropping to the floor inside the Astrodome.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, the media tried to pretend it wasn\u2019t important. Here was the coverage it got in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1992\/08\/23\/us\/1992-campaign-religious-right-bush-gets-full-support-religious-gathering.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New York Times<\/a>: \u201cBut it was Mr. Buchanan, in a speech Friday night, who most forcefully posed a Democratic victory as a personal threat to the audience here. Speaking of the rioting in Los Angeles last spring, he warned that \u2018barbarians\u2019 are taking over American cities. \u2018Where did that mob come from?\u2019 he asked. \u2018It came out of public schools where God and the Ten Commandments and the Bible were long ago expelled.\u2019 And, like many of the speakers, he blamed the Democrats in Congress for thwarting Mr. Reagan\u2019s efforts to restore prayer in the public schools.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When Bush lost, mind you, more was made of the speech, blaming Buchanan for the loss and the Republicans sharp turn to the right: \u201cIt probably sounded better in the original German,\u201d liberal journalist Molly Ivins said. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/revisiting-a-transformational-speech-the-culture-war-scorecard\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The American Conservative<\/a>, a Bush campaign operative by the name of George W. Bush \u2014 you may be familiar with his later work \u2014 was heard on the campaign floor saying \u201cthis is disastrous.\u201d The address was labeled \u201chate speech\u201d by some.<\/p>\n<p>Almost 31 years later, Buchanan\u2019s address on Aug. 17, 1992 \u2014 that disastrous hate-speech that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/op-ed-condemn-capitol-invaders-not-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Molly Ivins<\/a> thought came across better when Goebbels wrote it \u2014 has become one of the most prescient speeches ever delivered.<\/p>\n<p>Buchanan told the disappointed supporters of his Quixotic run \u2014 the \u201cBuchanan brigades,\u201d as he referred to them \u2014 that \u201cwe need to come home and stand beside George Bush.\u201d But perhaps not for the reasons Bush would have had him outline.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn these six months, campaigning from Concord, New Hampshire to California, I came to know our country better than ever before in my life, and I gathered up memories that are going to be with me for the rest of my days,\u201d Buchanan said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was that day-long ride through the great state of Georgia in a bus Vice President Bush himself had used in 1988 \u2013 called Asphalt One. The ride ended in a 9:00 p.m. speech in a tiny town in Southern Georgia called Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were those workers at the James River Paper Mill, in Northern New Hampshire in a town called Groveton \u2013 tough, hearty men. None of them would say a word to me as I came down the line, shaking their hands one by one. They were under a threat of losing their jobs at Christmas. And as I moved down the line, one tough fellow about my age just looked up and said to me, \u2018Save our jobs.\u2019 Then there was the legal secretary that I met at the Manchester airport on Christmas Day who came running up to me and said, \u2018Mr. Buchanan, I\u2019m going to vote for you.\u2019 And then she broke down weeping, and she said, \u2018I\u2019ve lost my job; I don\u2019t have any money, and they\u2019re going to take away my little girl. What am I going to do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s important to remember that, back then, these weren\u2019t natural Republicans. They were people Richard Nixon had managed to score a slight connection with \u2014 the so-called \u201csilent majority\u201d \u2014 and Ronald Reagan had managed to turn into \u201cReagan Republicans.\u201d But the general consensus was that these weren\u2019t\u00a0<em>real<\/em> Republicans, those who would stay conservative for the long haul. They were just hard-hat Democrats who couldn\u2019t connect with Sixties radicals, Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale.<\/p>\n<p>They didn\u2019t connect with George H.W. Bush, either. For all of his great qualities, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/photos-secret-service-shares-story-bush-41-agents-son-battling-leukemia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bush 41<\/a> was then the stereotypical Republican: country-club type, a bit of an egghead, a friend of big-business and socially elitist.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, Buchanan told the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/rnc-announces-plans-scaled-back-gop-convention\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GOP convention<\/a>, the people he met \u201care our people. They don\u2019t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they come from the same schoolyards and the same playgrounds and towns as we come from. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are our people. And we need to reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know how bad they\u2019re hurting. They don\u2019t expect miracles of us, but they need to know we care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the speech in full; the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/arnold-schwarzenegger-says-caitlyn-jenner-has-a-chance-at-being-ca-gov\/\" title=\"Arnold Schwarzenegger Says Caitlyn Jenner Has A Chance At Being CA Gov.\">relevant portion begins<\/a> at 24:15:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Pat Buchanan\u2019s \u201cCulture War\u201d Speech in Full (1992)<\/p>\n<p>While Buchanan gave a strong endorsement of the man who beat him in the 1992 Republican Primary, George H.W. Bush, this speech is famous for other reasons. The speech\u2019s namesake comes from its closing portion, a heartfelt and\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/M9Aceui3wC\">pic.twitter.com\/M9Aceui3wC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Gavin Sample (@GavinSampleMO) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GavinSampleMO\/status\/1662582797377191936?\">May 27, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThere were the people of Hayfork, the tiny town up in California\u2019s Trinity Alps, a town that is now under a sentence of death because a federal judge has set aside nine million acres for the habitat of the spotted owl, forgetting about the habitat of the men and women who live and work in Hayfork,\u201d Buchanan continued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd there were the brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of those L.A. riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still deeply believe in the American Dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Buchanan then went to recount the horrors of what liberals are now fond of recalling as the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/ironclad-videos-show-covid-lockdown-protesters-blm-rioters-nothing-alike\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">L.A. uprising<\/a>,\u201d not the \u201cL.A. riots.\u201d He talked to two Army troopers who \u201chad come into Los Angeles late in the evening of the second day, and the rioting was still going on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd two of them walked up a dark street, where the mob had burned and looted every single building on the block but one, a convalescent home for the aged. And the mob was headed in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe troopers came up the street, M-16s at the ready. And the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated because it had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, and backed by moral courage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know. And as those boys took back the streets of Los Angeles, block by block, my friends, we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod bless you, and God bless America,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n<p>After Twitter user Gavin Sample uploaded the speech in full, many Twitter users remembered the speech and the campaign more fondly than the media (and most Republicans at the time) did, with one calling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/pat-buchanan-president-trump-fighting-the-good-fight-as-a-middle-american-radical\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Buchanan<\/a> the \u201cgreatest man who never became president.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Unfortunately, it was one of the most prescient political speeches in the last 50 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Michael Millican (@Millican17) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Millican17\/status\/1662907110177349634?\">May 28, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The greatest man who never became President. We would be a much better country if he did in fact become President.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Kim Reynolds Stan (@KimReynoldsStan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KimReynoldsStan\/status\/1662612665204719618?\">May 28, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Yes! A great man, a great speech, a great movement! America would be so much better today if he had won in 1992 or 96. A true American Patriot!<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Frankie Newton (@SirGladiator) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SirGladiator\/status\/1662709871144255488?\">May 28, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The one that got away<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 StoogeHunter27 (@stoogehunter27) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/stoogehunter27\/status\/1662783031550066689?\">May 28, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The speech isn\u2019t just prescient, but it has an urgent message for conservatives today \u2014 too many of whom either want to go back to the weak-kneed conservatism of George H.W. Bush and refuse to engage in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/ehrlich-culture-wars-inflection-point-time-essence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">culture war<\/a> that surrounds us, or who want to find a way to effectively straddle what they see as populism and classical liberalism.<\/p>\n<p>There may have been many in the convention hall that night that booed the speech and hated its contents \u2014 some conservative, some liberal, some conventioneers, some members of the press. But not a one would call the Los Angeles riots the Los Angeles \u201cuprising,\u201d as if there were some positive connotation to it.<\/p>\n<p>Not a one, dropped down in the middle of a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/cnn-mocked-labeling-kenosha-mostly-peaceful-footage-showed-opposite\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fiery but mostly peaceful<\/a>\u201d protest during the summer of 2020 would find much laudable to say about it, tragic though George Floyd\u2019s death may have been.<\/p>\n<p>Not a one, magically transported to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/greta-thunberg-blasted-hate-capitalism-unless-benefits-tweet-time-gets-worse\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Greta Thunberg<\/a> harangue, would find her solutions to our environmental problems feasible, or even entertainable, to a serious mind.<\/p>\n<p>Not a one, told where America\u2019s manufacturing jobs had gone and how quickly they had been given away to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/heritage-expert-highlights-biden-admin-outsourcing-energy-production-china-making-planet-dirtier\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">our geopolitical rivals<\/a>, would believe that was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/john-stossel-breaks-down-5-myths-of-socialism-yet-young-americans-still-attracted-to-failed-deadly-system\/\" title=\"John Stossel Breaks Down 5 Myths Of Socialism; Yet Young Americans Still Attracted To Failed, Deadly System\">sound economic policy<\/a> or the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d of Adam Smith\u2019s market doing its job.<\/p>\n<p>Not a one would believe that, not only was illegal immigration the highest that had ever been recorded, some politicians actually thought it was net good \u2014 either to keep labor costs down or for the politically cynical belief that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/biden-branded-racist-major-assumption-hispanic-americans\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">demographics is destiny<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not a one, looking at the inflated cost of college and the massive debt our country had racked up, would think <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/gop-found-creative-way-block-bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-dems-join\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/joe-biden-public-colleges-and-universities-are-going-to-be-tuition-free-for-families-earning-less-than-125000-video\/\" title=\"Joe Biden: \u201cPublic Colleges and Universities Are Going to be Tuition-Free For Families Earning Less Than 5,000\u201d (VIDEO)\">forgiving student loans<\/a><\/a> was a sound idea, particularly when the burden would be borne by those who paid their debt or hadn\u2019t gone to college in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Not a one would believe that the America Pat Buchanan said Bill Clinton and the Democrats wanted to see come to pass actually did come to pass, and then some. Not a one would believe that, all too often, they were aided by Republicans who gave up the ship too easily.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives must conserve. Period. Conserve our jobs, conserve our culture, conserve our country. Thirty-one years ago, Pat Buchanan sounded the alarm. It\u2019s still ringing \u2014 and even louder than it ever did before.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/pat-buchanans-1992-culture-war-speech-hits-even-harder-today-greatest-man-never-became-president\/\">Pat Buchanan&#8217;s 1992 &#8216;Culture War&#8217; Speech Hits Even Harder Today: &#8216;Greatest Man Who Never Became President&#8217;<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\">The Western Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thirty-one years ago, Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon aide and political pundit, was the Republican equivalent of Ralph Nader in 2000. He challenged President George H.W. Bush in the primaries, claiming Bush lacked cultural conservatism and indifference. Buchanan&#8217;s bid ultimately led to his party losing the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":1963962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[548],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1963961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conservative-news-daily"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1963962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}