The journalist, television commentator, and former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan has been sharply criticized by his fellow Republicans for allegedly betraying Republican party "free-market" principles in his new book, The Great Betrayal. In the book Buchanan argues for protectionism and claims to have presented the strongest case ever made for "economic nationalism." This, his Republican critics allege, is contrary to what Republicans have always stood for.
Buchanan's critics are wrong. Pat Buchanan has picked up the mantle of the party of Lincoln and is its true political descendent. The Republican party was founded by a group of former Whigs who for decades had been lobbying for protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare for railroads and other corporations ("internal improvements"), and a central bank to finance their massive patronage schemes. They, too, fancied themselves "economic nationalists" by labeling their special-interest policies "The American System" (a phrase coined by Henry Clay), implying that all Americans would benefit from it.
But phrases like "economic nationalism" and "The American System" are cleverly contrived deceptions that attempt to mislead the public into believing that government handouts to powerful special interest groups are somehow in everyone's interest. A more accurate term for what the late-nineteenth-century Republicans stood for, and what the Buchanan wing of today's Republican party advocates, is mercantilism.