Patrick Buchanan

Patrick J. Buchanan is an American author, syndicated columnist, and television commentator. In 2000, he ran for President of the United States on the Reform Party ticket. He had twice unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for president. He has written several books on his political and religious views.

He is also one of the founding editors of and main contributors to The American Conservative magazine, and as such would be labeled an "old" conservative figure, particularily criticizing the Bush administration's neo-conservative and profligate spending habits.

"The conservative movement has been hijacked and turned into a globalist, interventionalist, open borders ideology that is not the conservative movement I grew up in."

During the 2000 campaigns, and in some circles after, he appeared often with Ralph Nader to discuss disturbing imperialist and globalization trends in the Republican Party and Democratic Party. In general their analyses of problems tend to converge, but their solutions diverge sharply.

Buchanan, a spectacular stumper, believes that United States sovereignty has been sacrificed to the gods of the global economy. Labeled an "isolationalist", he was a loud critic of NAFTA, CAFTA, George W. Bush's foreign policy of rejecting U.S. allies and invading Iraq, and running up huge trade deficits.

"political hardball"

Buchanan "popularized the phrase 'political hardball'--proposing, for example, that the Internal Revenue Service be ordered to investigate liberal think tanks."

Nixon's speechwriter

Buchanan served as "a speechwriter and senior adviser for President Richard Nixon. There he coined the phrase 'silent majority' and helped shape the middlebrow strategy that drew millions of hard-hat Democrats to Nixon. 'We should move to re-capture the anti-Establishment tradition or theme in American politics,' Buchanan wrote in a typical 1972 memo."

Buchanan Inc.

Pat Buchanan and Angela "Bay" Buchanan, his younger sister, "have built a semipermanent organization that has promoted conservative causes while at the same time making them rich. They've become experts at the lucrative game of direct-mail fundraising and masters at qualifying for federal matching funds. In between presidential elections, they continue their issue-advocacy and fundraising operations through a tightly controlled nonprofit organization. In this fashion, Buchanan Inc. has been promoting Pat's television and publishing careers--and employing Bay full time--since 1992," Monte Paulsen wrote in the November 22, 1999, issue of The Nation.

Bay Buchanan "tends the nest" of her brother's campaigns. "As compulsively organized as her brother is freewheeling, she keeps the campaign running with an attention to detail that aides describe as obsessive. She 'runs it like a general,' Pat's wife, Shelley, told the Christian Science Monitor [in November 1999]. 'There wouldn't be a campaign if it weren't for Bay.'"

Published works

• Right from the Beginning (ISBN 0895267454)
• A Republic, Not an Empire (ISBN 0895261596)
• The Death of the West (ISBN 0312302592)
• The Great Betrayal (ISBN 0316115185)
• Where the Right Went Wrong (ISBN 0312341156)

Affiliations

• The American Cause, Founder

Resources

External resources

• Official Presidential Website - Archive.
• Pat Buchanan's Skeleton Closet, RealChange.org. Includes links to primary source documents.