Creeping Buchananism

Don’t look now, but a battle is being waged for the soul of the Republican Party. Roughly speaking, it is the same one that has quietly raged within the ranks since the early 1990’s. Coincidentally, one of the most iconic fighters in this ideological sparring match is the same man that spearheaded (and lost) the last battle fifteen years ago: Patrick Joseph Buchanan. This struggle, waged for the most part behind the scenes over the past decade, was suddenly thrust in to the open after it was announced that Dubai Ports World, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, had bought out the operational duties of a British firm in several of America’s ports. Now the last remnants of Buchanan’s “America First” nativism, protectionism, and outright xenophobia may suddenly be flourishing among several dissenting Republicans.

To be sure, it’s difficult to say how much of this sentiment is genuine and how much is pure political opportunism on the part of a few ambitious potential presidential candidates wishing to distance themselves from an unpopular Republican president. Having said that, we can completely ignore the democrats on this issue; everything they’ve ever done since January 2001 is opportunism and hypocrisy. They may have taken it to a new level this time with a “racial profiling bad, doing business with the A-Rabs worse” policy. This current struggle within the party is on the voter and rank-and-file level. Those supporting President Bush are mostly business conservatives in favor of increased globalization, integration, and free trade. Not surprisingly, this is everything the paleo-cons of Buchanan’s ilk vehemently oppose. To agricultural and labor interests, people still stuck in the 1970’s, and Michael Savage’s core audience, this UAE ports deal is like NAFTA on steroids.

Buchanan’s faction has been consistently wrong on practically every economic and foreign policy issue since they came out in the 1990’s. They see free trade agreements as being more threatening to America and her interests than terrorist attacks. They grow indignant when dead-end unionized manufacturing jobs with mediocre pay are outsourced to be done better, cheaper, and more efficiently by workers overseas. They think immigration (especially from Mexico) is a disease and that American soldiers should be deployed along our southern border instead of defending freedom in the Middle East and Korea. They were wrong then and are very wrong now.

It’s one thing to object when our ports are being operated by a British firm. But to suggest that British companies are ok while Arab ports are suspect is pure unadulterated racism. So what if a couple 9/11 hijackers came from the United Arab Emirates? If they came from the United Kingdom instead would we be bombing London? Just last week three terrorists were arrested in Toledo. Does that mean we can’t do business with Ohio anymore (this would make sense, with Ohio 47^th in job creation)? The UAE has been criticized several times by these Buchananites as not being a reliable ally of the United States in the war on terror. I ask them who has been a more reliable ally since 9/11, the United Arab Emirates or France?

President Bush is right on this issue, plain and simple. In this war on terror, which will prove to be a generational struggle, we need every ally we can get in the Middle East. Blocking this deal will prove to serve as a slap in the face not only to the UAE but to every other moderate state in the region looking to improve relations with the US. It would also play in to the hands of terrorists in their America-bashing that we don’t trust or like Arabs and Muslims. On the contrary, there is no better rebuttal to the charge of imperialism than “look how much your country owns here!”