Pat Buchanan says that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has mainstreamed and normalized many of the same ideas he espoused when he ran for president two decades earlier that then shocked much of the electorate.
In an interview with
The Daily Beast, the veteran political commentator and firebrand in his own right said he was "astonished when [Trump] came out against trade and immigration — and to Make America First — that's on my [campaign] hats!"
After all, Buchanan proposed as a candidate building a wall on the Mexican border, an idea that then got him shunned by the Republican establishment.
Explaining why Trump has to this point been successful while his own three attempts at reaching the White House fell so short, Buchanan told
The Washington Post: "What's different today is that the returns are in, the results are known.
"Everyone sees clearly now the de-industrialization of America, the cost in blood and treasure from decade-long wars… and the pervasive presence of illegal immigrants . . . [And on international trade], from 2000 to 2010, the U.S. lost 55,000 factories and 6 million manufacturing jobs."
Buchanan told The Daily Beast, "The people who like the Donald remember America as it was and don't really like what it's become," and warned that "the Republican Party is in danger of demographic suicide if it doesn't get more African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.
In the Reagan years, white Americans were 90 percent of the electorate and so capturing two-third of that bloc gives you the 1984 landslide," he said.
But "now the white population is 73 percent of the electorate and falling to 70 percent. White Americans are 63 percent of the country and will be a minority by 2041 or 2042."