Donald Trump, by Gage Skidmore

Presidential Insurgency Candidates, 1992 to 2016 

Mark Wegierski addresses a topical issue

In 1992, Pat Buchanan launched his insurgency-candidacy for the Republican nomination against a sitting President. The candidacy was in itself helpful to the Republican Party, as it dampened down the public profile of the run by the notorious David Duke. Indeed, the National Review at that time urged a vote for Buchanan in the New Hampshire primary. However, after considerable success in New Hampshire, when it appeared that Buchanan might have a slim chance of winning the nomination, he was buried by a firestorm of media and establishment Republican criticism.

Some have argued that Buchanan’s strong showing in the nomination battle forced George H. W. Bush to offer him the keynote address at the Republican Party nomination convention. This offer supposedly panicked “centrist” voters to move away from the Republican Party. Most of the media interpretations of the speech were tendentious, however. A more plausible explanation was that the tedious pragmatism of George H. W. Bush drove considerable numbers of Republicans to vote for the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot – effectively delivering victory to Bill Clinton.

Contesting the 1996 Republican nomination against the lackluster Robert Dole, Buchanan repeated his success in New Hampshire, this time winning the state with 60 percent of the Republican primary vote. Since it seemed that Robert Dole would not present a strong challenge to Bill Clinton, rank-and-file Republicans could have considered a dark-horse candidate. Nevertheless, the Republican establishment, cheered on by the media, again turned ferociously on Buchanan, thus denying him the nomination. Robert Dole went on to lose disastrously to Bill Clinton.

In November 2000, Buchanan mustered no more than a half percent of the vote as the Reform Party candidate – and was not supported by party founder Ross Perot. The election was so close that only a slight increase in Buchanan’s vote might have sunk George W. Bush. At the same time, Ralph Nader’s nearly three percent of the vote (under the banner of the Green Party) clearly weakened Al Gore. Surviving the various Gore challenges in the run up to the election, George W. Bush was finally confirmed as U.S. President-Elect in December. (It was claimed by some commentators that putting Buchanan’s name first on the ballot in Florida caused some confused Democrats to vote for him in error – in effect, taking votes away from Gore.)

Ironically, a very dynamic, third-party Buchanan candidacy in 2004 might well have delivered the election to John Kerry. The Left’s strategizing on how to stop George W. Bush had not considered providing huge funds for a Buchanan third-party candidacy. In 2004, Ralph Nader ran for the Presidency as an independent candidate (rather than under the Green Party banner) but his candidacy was a negligible factor. Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party went nowhere.

In 2008, Nader also ran for the Presidency, but he was a negligible factor – except perhaps putting further pressure on the Democrats to move their agenda leftward. In the 2008 battle for the Republican Party Presidential nomination, another dark-horse candidate emerged – Ron Paul, whose candidacy was compared to that of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Unlike Buchanan, who had never held major public office, Paul had held elected office for over thirty years as a U.S. Congressman from Texas. The media ignored him as much as possible, although various smears were also attempted.

Buchanan’s candidacies in 1992 and 1996 took place before the emergence of the Internet as a truly mass-medium in the late-1990s. Despite its potential boost, some commentators have argued that the tighter campaign finance regulations and the accelerated primary season work against dark-horse candidates. It also appeared in 2008 that the Republican and Democratic Party establishments and the media were more centered on the “recognized frontrunners” than in earlier years. In that year, the Republican primaries were mostly “winner-take-all” which favored whoever quickly emerged as the front-runner. It has been calculated that, given a more proportional allocation of delegates in the Republican primary voting system, the gap between McCain and the others would have been only a handful of delegates. However, the Democratic primaries were mostly based on proportional allocation of delegates – which probably prevented Hillary Clinton from racking up a decisive, early lead. The Republican system played to the Republican Party establishment, while the Democratic system accentuated their (left-wing) fringe.

In terms of their ideas and their image, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul were markedly different. Buchanan, evidently, is a controversial, combative, and abrasive figure. In contrast, Paul, the genial country doctor, who promised to take America out of increasingly unpopular wars, appealed to diverse sectors of the American populace. Paul seemingly represented the decency and idealism of traditionalist dissent against the behemoth-state. In marked contrast to the domestically-focused politics of Buchanan’s sharply defined class-war (raised most prominently in the recession of the early 1990s) Paul offered the hopeful message of a re-evaluation of America’s relations with the world (raised in a time of unpopular foreign wars, when anti-imperialist sentiments were very prominent) promising simply peace.

In 2008, Paul declined to run as a third-party or independent candidate for the Presidency, despite the fact that at the time the Republican Party nomination – or even merely some possibility of a meaningful role for him among the Republicans – were clearly denied to him by various entrenched interests. In his 2012 primary run, Paul did better than in 2008, but he was again sidelined by the Republican Party establishment.

Mitt Romney ran a lackluster and timid campaign against Obama. He did not go after Obama and his policies with one-tenth of the zeal that he has recently shown in lambasting Donald Trump, the insurgent-candidate of 2016.

Donald Trump, a self-made billionaire, combines policy aspects of both Buchanan and Ron Paul. He appeals especially to working class people, and those weary of interminable wars and entanglements abroad. The fact that Trump was able to prevail against the Republican Party bigwigs that pulled out all the stops to defeat him also impresses this constituency.

Having had a major show on network television makes him a well known figure. Because he is personally very wealthy, this means to many that “he can’t be bought” by the Washington power-brokers and “insiders”. He follows two terms of Obama, and two terms of George W. Bush, both of which have been disastrous for America. Many voters are so disillusioned with politics that Trump’s abrasiveness and numerous other faults are overlooked. He is the “anti-Establishment candidate”, par excellence.

Bernie Sanders was another insurgent-candidate, whose message, ironically, somewhat resembled that of Trump. However, Sanders was unable to overcome the Democratic Party establishment that has delivered the nomination on a silver platter to Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump is the only Presidential insurgency-candidate who has secured a major party nomination. It remains to be seen whether he can prevail in November.*

* Editorial Note –  Inshallah, he will win

Toronto-based writer Mark Wegierski is a longtime observer of U.S. politics