Pat Buchanan remembers a score of violent leftist attacks in America, and more

Here:

The campus violence and urban riots of the decade, from Harlem to Watts to Newark and Detroit, to Washington, D.C., and 100 cities after Dr. King’s death, were not the work of the Goldwater right.

Phyllis Schlafly passed away yesterday: The 1992 Illinois Mother of the year who almost single-handedly defeated the ERA

Ann Coulter remembers the woman without whom Goldwater and Reagan conservatism might never have been born, here:

Though conservative women in later generations are often compared to Schlafly, all of us combined could never match the titanic accomplishments of this remarkable woman. Schlafly is unquestionably one of the most important people of ... the twentieth century – and a good part of the twenty-first. Among her sex, she is rivaled only by Margaret Thatcher. 

Hard libertarian billionaire daughter Rebekah Mercer is behind Trump's shift to Bannon and Conway, away from deportation

The price of consensus for Mercer's "help" in retrospect was obviously that Trump soften his deportation stance. Bloomberg's story here in June completely misses the signficance of the Mercers' libertarianism.

The Hill had the story already on August 17, here, the day Trump shook up his campaign by hiring Stephen Bannon as CEO and Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, detailing Mercer's links to Stanford, the Heritage Foundation, BREITBART, the Ted Cruz campaign and libertarian think tank CATO:

“The Mercers basically own this campaign,” said a source who has worked with Rebekah Mercer in her political activities. “They have installed their people. ... And now they’ve got their data firm in there.” ... Little has been written about the Mercers because they avoid the public spotlight, but conservative sources who know the family, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described them as “kind, civic-minded people and consensus-builders.” ... But that source, who has worked with Mercer in some of her other political ventures, said it was a surprise to some people that the Mercers had swung so forcefully behind Trump, given her ideological bent. “She identifies as a libertarian. At least she always did,” the source said, adding that Mercer was a big supporter of libertarian think tanks like the Goldwater Institute and Cato. “With Bekah you always had to prove your libertarian racing stripes,” the source added. “This seems really strange.”

And they say liberals have a death wish: Why Republicans fail

Republicans fail because instead of attacking Democrats, they would rather attack and eat their own.

And it's not like both sides in the Party haven't done this, or that conservatives don't have a case against the leadership. The long history of establishment attacks against conservatives goes back to the George Romney failure to endorse Goldwater in 1964, book-ended most recently by the Mitt Romney campaign's vicious attack of the totally hapless Todd Akin of Missouri, a mere pimple on the butt of the elephant. The kinder gentler conservatism of the Bush clan was, after all, a repudiation of the Reagan era. Kinder and gentler it wasn't, nor conservative.

Pressuring their own Speaker of the House John Boehner to resign last week, however, marks a new low in the history of Republican politics. And this morning Laura Ingraham is endorsing the "frenzy" to get rid of the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. People caught up in this have more in common with the Jacobin Club than they do with the men who prevented the revolution against the rights of Englishmen in 1776.

Conservatives now find themselves in the ignoble position of doing the job the voters didn't do in 2014. And they say liberals have a death wish. 

What goes around comes around, but for the faction which drapes itself in the US Constitution there is nothing conservative, or wise, about any of this. Conservatives should ask themselves whether the citizens of the state of Kentucky and Ohio are entitled to the representation they have or not. And if not, then why are conservatives entitled to theirs?

Blame the libertarians for handing Romney his loss in 2012, not conservatives

Third parties bled away over 60% of the few votes Romney lost by in his failed eastern strategy in Election 2012.

Mitt Romney's bid to win the White House failed by 64 electoral college votes, all of which he narrowly lost in an eastern strategy in just four states by a total of only 429,522 popular votes:

Florida, lost by 74,309 votes, where third parties garnered an unbelievable 90,972 votes;

Virginia, lost by 149,298 votes, where third parties garnered 60,147 votes;

Ohio, lost by 166,272 votes, where third parties took a whopping 101,788 votes;

and New Hampshire, lost by 39,643 votes, where third parties took 11,493 votes.

That's a loss for Romney of 64 electoral college votes, enough to have taken him from 206 to 270 to take the presidency, losing 429,522 total popular votes in just four states where third parties all told took 264,400 votes, 61.5% of the total needed by Romney to win.

This isn't to say that those were all necessarily Republican votes which went third party, but fully 50.5% of the 264,400 were cast for the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who had been a Republican candidate for president until late 2011 when he was excluded from the Republican debates. At that point he bolted to the Libertarian Party, and openly stated his intention to play a spoiler role:

“I hope that I would get labeled as a ‘spoiler’ from the standpoint of people actually focusing on what it is I am saying, and that this changes the way whoever wins governs,” Johnson told Sunshine State News in an exclusive interview Saturday at the 2012 Ron Paul Festival.

Combine the pique factor around that with the natural alienation felt by libertarians toward a Mormon candidate who was himself socially conservative in his habits and loathe to exercise himself on behalf of libertarians' usual limited government ideas and you can make a case that it was libertarians who cost Romney the election, by casting spoiler votes, staying away from the polls entirely, or even voting for Obama out of spite.

This is a better explanation for the Romney loss than some mythical 4 million conservatives staying away from the polls in 2012 as Rush Limbaugh keeps saying. The numbers themselves disprove that, as Romney garnered 1 million more votes in 2012 than McCain in 2008. It was a much closer election than the (mostly libertarian) punditocracy wants you to know.

Conservatives, most of whom are Christians, aren't put off by abstainers like Mitt Romney the way libertarians might be (many Christians are abstemious too), and Christians find it much more morally problematic to stay away from the polls, or to vote out of spite, in a way which libertarians would not. Christian voters are nothing if not preoccupied with their moral and social responsibility, but libertarians care little for that.

In fact, withdrawing from social responsibilities is elevated to the level of a moral principle by libertarians. Staying away from the polls is a John Galt tactic straight out of the playbook from Ayn Rand. It's an ongoing and adolescent fantasy of theirs. It's not a Christian tactic, which is to say it's not a conservative tactic. Conservatives love their country too much to let it go down the drain, and they actively admired Mitt Romney for his commitment to and long record of public service even if his religion and social policy positions bothered them.

It remains a question if Republicans can expect to succeed in future with a brood of vipers in their party such as the libertarians. Republicans should reconsider their tilt toward libertarianism and seriously ask themselves whether things might not go better for them if they more actively pursued the social conservative vote. From the Christians Republicans can expect forgiveness, but from the libertarians only vindictiveness. Isn't that how the Bushes got elected after turning their backs on the Reagan revolution? Isn't that the conceit of moderate Republican presidential aspirants still today?

Why isn't that an easy call? After all, the libertarian Ron Paul who bitterly lost to Romney in the Republican primaries never left the Republican Party, but he never endorsed Mitt Romney either: "I don’t fully endorse him for president,” he said, as late as August 2012, less than three months before the election. Message to libertarians: good ahead, stay home, see if I care.

Call it an ironic payback to Romney, whose moderate Republican father likewise wouldn't endorse the conservative Barry Goldwater after losing to him in 1964, but it's also another sign in a long list of signs that libertarians have more in common with liberals than with conservatives.

They're content if they too can defeat Republicans.

Conservatives Forget Romney's Family Was Long Opposed To Conservatism

So sfgate.com, here and here.

The liberal Republicans like Mitt Romney's father George Romney didn't support the conservative candidate, Barry Goldwater, in 1964, but they still expect us to support them in 2012.

That's what you'll read when you look up "chutzpah" in the dictionary.

h/t 'Nita

Who's The Opportunist? Newt Gingrich or Pat Buchanan?

Pat Buchanan has asserted (video and discussion here) that the Reagan White House viewed Newt Gingrich as something of a political opportunist and Rockefeller Republican:

“[I]n the Reagan White House, Newt Gingrich was considered quite frankly by a lot of folks to be something of a political opportunist and who was not trusted and who had played no role whatsoever. He was a Rockefeller Republican in the great Goldwater-Rockefeller battle, where conservatism came of age.”

Michael Reagan on The Laura Ingraham Show this morning found that amusing, coming from a guy who left the Republican Party to run for The Presidency on a third party ticket when he felt he could no longer get any traction in the GOP. Michael Reagan also pointed out that his father the president had once been a liberal Democrat before switching to the Republican Party in 1962.

Pat doesn't name names. Maybe "a lot of folks" is just code for "Pat Buchanan." Quite frankly.

Remembering Some Who Endorsed Obama in 2008

Just making my list, and checking it often.

Ken Adelman

Wick Allison, former publisher of National Review

Ann Althouse

Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston University

The Daily Bail

David Brooks, The New York Times

Christopher Buckley, National Review

Jimmy Buffett

Governor Arne Carlson

Senator Lincoln Chafee

Ken Duberstein

Julie Nixon Eisenhower

Susan Eisenhower

Charles Fried

Representative Wayne Gilchrist

C.C. Goldwater

Representative Ryan Grim

Merle Haggard

Governor Linwood Holton

Jeffrey Hart, National Review

Representative Joel Haugen

Rita Hauser

Larry Hunter

Douglas Kmiec

Representative Jim Leach

Scott McClellan

Scott McConnell, The American Conservative

Tim McGraw

John Mellencamp

Governor William Milliken

Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal

Kathleen Parker

General Colin Powell

Senator Larry Pressler

Ron Reagan

J.K. Rowling

Bill Ruckelshaus

Andrew Tobias

Governor William Weld