Ross Perot dead at 89 (1 Viewer)

[timschochet]

Just heard the news. 

I didn’t share his politics, but a remarkable man. His heroism in Iran is detailed in Ken Follet’s book On Wings of Eagles. 

 

[rockaction]

Just heard the news. 

I didn’t share his politics, but a remarkable man. His heroism in Iran is detailed in Ken Follet’s book On Wings of Eagles. 

Perot is responsible for the Buchanan/Huckabee/Trump wing of the anti-free trade deal Republican party.

He was responsible for about fifteen percent of the electorate and when the Reform Party folded, they folded into the Republican Party. Anybody who wants to know about the current state of the Republican Party need pay attention to his 1992 presidential run. 

RIP H. Ross Perot. 

 

[Gary Coal Man]

Perot is responsible for the Buchanan/Huckabee/Trump wing of the anti-free trade deal Republican party.

Perot was certainly outspoken on that issue, but I wouldn’t say he was responsible for that wing.  Especially since Buchanan was already running that issue in the Republican primaries in ‘91 before Perot entered the race in ‘92.  Perot just filled a void as the messenger for a trade position that Buchanan had already entered into the GOP and the public sphere.

Here’s a couple articles on that:

“A quarter-century before Trump descended into the atrium of his Manhattan skyscraper to launch his unlikely bid for the White House, Buchanan, until then a columnist, political operative and TV commentator, stepped onto a stage in Concord, New Hampshire, to declare his own candidacy 10 weeks ahead of the state’s presidential primary. Associating the “globalist” President George H. W. Bush with “bureaucrats in Brussels” pursuing a “European superstate” that trampled on national identity, Buchanan warned his rowdy audience, “We must not trade in our sovereignty for a cushioned seat at the head table of anybody’s new world order!” His radically different prescription, which would underpin three consecutive runs for the presidency: a “new nationalism” that would focus on “forgotten Americans” left behind by bad trade deals, open-border immigration policies and foreign adventurism. His voice booming, Buchanan demanded: “Should the United States be required to carry indefinitely the full burden of defending rich and prosperous allies who take America’s generosity for granted as they invade our markets?”

This rhetoric—deployed again during his losing bid for the 1996 GOP nomination, and once more when he ran on the Reform Party ticket in 2000—not only provided a template for Trump’s campaign, but laid the foundation for its eventual success. Dismissed as a fringe character for rejecting Republican orthodoxy on trade and immigration and interventionism, Buchanan effectively weakened the party’s defenses, allowing a more forceful messenger with better timing to finish the insurrection he started back in 1991. All the ideas that seemed original to Trump’s campaign could, in fact, be attributed to Buchanan—from depicting the political class as bumbling stooges to singling out a rising superpower as an economic menace (though back then it was Japan, not China) to rallying the citizenry to “take back” a country whose destiny they no longer dictated. “Pitchfork Pat,” as he was nicknamed, even deployed a phrase that combined Trump’s two signature slogans: “Make America First Again.” (LINK)

And...

”Here we go again. In the 1990s Pat Buchanan launched a civil war within the Republican Party on a platform targeting immigration and trade. Some claimed Pitchfork Pat was the future of the GOP, though in the end he mainly contributed to its presidential defeats. 

In the waning days of the Obama Presidency the GOP’s Buchanan wing is making a comeback... (LINK)

With that said, hearing that trade message from a different messenger made it more palatable for some people.

 

[rockaction]

Perot was certainly outspoken on that issue, but I wouldn’t say he was responsible for that wing.  Especially since Buchanan was already running that issue in the Republican primaries in ‘91 before Perot entered the race in ‘92.  Perot just filled a void as the messenger for a trade position that Buchanan had already entered into the GOP and the public sphere.

Here’s a couple articles on that:

With that said, hearing that trade message from a different messenger made it more palatable for some people.

Great stuff, GCM. Thanks for posting. I always thought that Perot was really the first and that it all got subsumed. I'd imagine the combination of the two platforms are why we are where we are today.

 

[identikit]

I was all for him in 1992 until he withdrew.

What might have been had he stayed in for the entire campaign.

 

[knowledge dropper]

What was his beef with HW Bush?

Regardless of his politics he was a great American.  RIP. 

 

[wikkidpissah]

Perot was a lot like Bernie Sanders, for you young'uns - he represented a neglected idea (his was ending deficit spending) which captured the public imagination and got swept up into the fervor believing that it was he and not the idea which was holding sway

 

[[scooter]]

What was his beef with HW Bush?

From an economic perspective, Bush believed in free trade. Perot didn't.

Also, Bush was slow to acknowledge the recession of the early '90s. People were getting outsourced left and right and Dan Quayle was telling people to just go apply at Burger King.

Also, Perot was an old school conspiracy nut who believed that the CIA (which was once headed by Bush) was withholding information about POWs being held in Vietnam in the late '70s.

 

[identikit]

Read a story about him, well before he ran for the Presidency:

Once he became successful, he bought his childhood home.  But a previous owner had painted the brick house.

He instructed his workers to clean off the paint, but that wasn't an option.

So he had them remove the bricks and turn them around so they looked like the original house.

 

[knowledge dropper]

From an economic perspective, Bush believed in free trade. Perot didn't.

Also, Bush was slow to acknowledge the recession of the early '90s. People were getting outsourced left and right and Dan Quayle was telling people to just go apply at Burger King.

Also, Perot was an old school conspiracy nut who believed that the CIA (which was once headed by Bush) was withholding information about POWs being held in Vietnam in the late '70s.

Thanks.  The last paragraph makes sense.  At the time it seemed like a personal crusade against Bush. 

 

[identikit]

A little long, but a good summary of his life:

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/business/2019/07/09/ross-perot-self-made-billionaire-patriot-philanthropist-dies-89

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

I did resent him trotting out Adm. Stockdale past his prime to stare like a deer in the headlights during his debate.  That was a good and honorable man who served his country and who answered another call to service when he should not have been called, but Perot was desperate. Lockbox!

 

[flapgreen]

Love Perot

 

[BroncoFreak_2K3]

Dana Carney did a great Perot. But not as good as Hartman’s Admiral Stockdale.

 

[Joe Summer]

His childish and vaguely racist criticism of the Vietnam Memorial put him on the wrong side of history.

 

[jon_mx]

Big fan of his focus on getting the budget under control.   Probably was instrumental in raising that issue and leading to a balance budget.  

 

[skol asylum]

Saw him in college sometime after his run. He was self deprecating, humorous, and interesting. Even smaller in person than you would think. RIP.