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Toyota Republicans

 

Recently on the McLaughlin Group, Pat Buchanan coined a new term for a faction of the Republican party: Toyota Republicans. The phrase is an odd one because it is far more subtle and complicated than it seems. Under the watch of the Bush administration we saw outsourcing become the norm. We didn’t slowly lose a difficult battle to China, we eagerly gave them the plans and asked them to take over our manufacturing. The Alabama foreign car manufacturers Pat referred to are an interesting case. When we can’t even lead in our own industry in our own country selling to our own people, we have failed. It isn’t about patriotism and buying American. I’ll buy American when faced with a tough choice, but in the end I’m going with the better product, as should we all. We don’t need to bail out the failures, we need to create successes. These foreign plants on U.S. soil aren’t entirely a bad thing, although they are still sending our money overseas.

An interesting point has been made about who pays the cost of medical care. If the American auto makers are saddled with responsibility for the health care of their workers, and the foreign competitors aren’t, because the government takes care of that, then we didn’t fire the first shot in the coming Cold War Race to Socialism, they did.

As Pat puts it: “America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies.“

How should we respond? Pat wants us to “produce ourselves the guns and ships to defend the republic and the necessities of our national life so we could stand alone against the world.“ He suggests we do this by putting tariffs on imports in order to level the playing field. This isn’t a wise step forward in the new global economy; it leads to foreign retaliation, reducing our exports.  When you are only selling things to yourself, you don’t earn any money. It would work well here in the U.S. Until the industries got lazy and corrupt. We already can see the results of such tactics in the corn industry. The reason everything we eat is packed with corn syrup is that we tax the import of sugar and subsidize the growing of corn. What we need is to be lighter on our feet. We need small specialized manufacturers.

Pat Buchanan puts the blame on neocons for removing tariffs imposed by Reagan:

“When an icon of American industry, Harley-Davidson, was being run out of business by cutthroat Japanese dumping of big bikes to kill the “Harley Hog,” Reagan slapped 50 percent tariffs on their motorcycles and imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars. Message to Tokyo. If you folks want to keep selling cars here, start building them here.“

Alabama is now home to several automotive plants:

  • Mercedes-Benz: Headquarted in Germany
  • Honda: Headquartered in Japan
  • Hyundai: Headquartered in South Korea
  • Toyota: headquartered in Japan

These U.S. plants make a total of more than 700,000 vehicles a year and employ over 11,000 workers.  This would all be a good thing if these vehicles were being shipped out, but they are built here to be sold here. To follow the money: You buy a Toyota. Part of that money goes to the workers in the Toyota plants in Alabama and elsewhere in the US; another part goes to Japan. To some extent it is nice to have foreign industry in our country; it gives them incentive to be nice to us so they can retain their factory. On the other hand, if we are making the product in our country with our labor and selling it to our people, we could do without sending the profits to Japan.

Pat is afraid that if we don’t do whatever it takes to keep the big three in business, that these foreign owned manufacturers will take over their market share.

Agreements like NAFTA aren’t really free trade, they are managed trade. In the end, under NAFTA, manufactuuring and agriculture find advantage in moving to Mexico. This includes companies like Toyota. The question is, are these Toyota republicans opposing the bailout on strong free trade principles, or are southern politicians trying to remove the competing U.S. manufacturers in Detroit to better their own foreign owned manufacturing?

From here on I will be using the term ‘Toyota Republican’ to describe the NAFTA loving portion of the party that is partially responsible for outsourcing and the exodus of  industry.

 

Update: Leo Gerard, the president of the United Steelworkers Union, went on Bill Moyers Joural with his take on the auto bailout and the Toyota Republicans.

Pat Buchanan – the Ideological Core of the Right

Pat Buchanan Chop

Pat Buchanan is my favorite political commentator. I get a lot of flak for this.

I don’t agree with a lot of what he says, but he has a solid perspective based an a mountain of knowledge. He often comes across as bigoted, which can be puzzling, since it seems to be mostly counter to the way he sees current reality. He is a paleoconservative and nationalist in the extreme.

What is often mistaken for racism is a strong conviction that if you are living in America, you should be an American first, including subscribing to what he sees as the socially conservative heritage and giving up other affiliations. Reality occasionally clashes with his faith-based convictions making it seem as if the man has two worldviews, each of which he argues with extreme conviction, but which are mutually exclusive. Maybe I’m just used to this because my dad seems to think the same way.

Pat Buchanan is one of the core members of the McLaughlin Group, where every Friday he can be seen trying desperately to get a word in edgewise while enunciating all of his points with his signature chop (pictured). In the past he has been mostly in contention with Eleanor Clift, but recently the two seem to agree with each other more than they agree with the more centrist members of the group (I can identify with this). In a recent episode he coined the term Toyota Republicans to refer to the demographic of mostly southern workers at foreign car plants here in the U.S.

Pat Buchanan is a very sharp 70 years young, and has a resume including a masters in Journalism from Columbia University, opposition speech writer and advisor to Nixon, white house communications advisor (85-87),  and three time presidential candidate.

He coined the term ‘silent majority’

What impresses me most about him is that while he has a strong desire to turn the country towards Christianity, which he sees as its roots, he has an  iron grip on the current reality and is able to predict how a complex political or social issue will play out with as great an accuracy if it is going against his goals as if it is moving towards them. And he strikes me as very honest, which is a sorely underrated trait in today’s politically correct and cautious commentary. Political correctness veers us towards a time in which there is only one opinion the press is allowed to have, which is hardly the intent of the First Amendment.

Pat Buchanan  has biased opinions, but near impartial predictions.

Quotes:

“There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in The Middle East – the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.”

“We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy. We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called ‘isolationism.'”

“The village atheist has the right to be heard; he has no right to be heeded. While he has a right not to have his own children indoctrinated in what he believes are false and foolish teachings, he has no right to dictate what other children may be taught.”

“Neither Beltway party is going to drain this swamp, because to them it is not a swamp at all, but a projected wetland and their natural habitat”

Books:

Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart

State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America

The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization

The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to..

Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency

A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny

Conservative votes, liberal victories: Why the right has failed

Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny

The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority

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