Buchanan: ‘Bern, Baby, Bern’ Doesn’t Work in the South

Conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan said Democrats’ defeat in the special election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District should teach the party that a nationwide campaign strategy of “Bern, baby, Bern” is destined for failure, during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

Buchanan, a former senior adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said that Democrat Jon Ossoff’s crushing loss to Republican Karen Handel Tuesday night should serve as a wake-up call to Democrats. Buchanan said Ossoff’s loss in the most expensive House race in history shows that a strategy based on merely “resisting” President Donald Trump will not work.

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Ossoff garnered massive financial and grassroots support in the race from progressives and liberals outside of Georgia.

“This is going to cause some real thinking inside the Democratic Party, whether to go with the Bernie strategy of just ‘Bern, baby, Bern,’ or whether they’re going to try to play Republican or moderate Republican in the South,” Buchanan said. “But when you get 48 percent and you can’t push it over the top in a general election and … how many millions of dollars did they pump into that? That raises a real question about the spending in these ads. What do they really mean?”

As the Democrats struggle to concoct a new direction for their party, Buchanan noted that GOP also had a winning strategy with characterizing Ossoff as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) puppet.

“But their ace in the hole is the lady from San Francisco,” he said. “If you tell them, ‘You really want Nancy Pelosi in control of the House and nothing done on jobs or the economy for the next two years and them all berating Trump — you want that the next two years?’ I think they’ve got a good case.”

“Frankly, if I were the Democrats, I mean, I think the Democrats ought to take a hard look at whether they really want to be led into the 2018 elections by a lady who’s approaching 80 years old and is deeply controversial,” the former Reagan adviser added.

Buchanan said the GOP deserved huge credit for rallying its base together and turning out to vote for Handel in the hotly contested House election.

“But the turnout apparently also, Laura, was terrific, which suggests that Republicans realized the stakes involved, also. And they really came out after that and really pulled this thing out from behind. So I think it’s quite heartening for the Republicans and for Trump,” he said.

“I think it’s a real sign that the Republican Party can really pull it together,” Buchanan said, adding that “the whole idea that Donald Trump at the top of the Party is going to drag down Republican candidates simply did not hold.”

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Although Republicans eked out a victory in Georgia, Buchanan warned that Handel’s election in a traditionally solid-red district and the Party’s victories in other special elections since Trump’s inauguration “haven’t been by startling margins.” And with Congress’ struggle to pass any major pieces of legislation and boost the president’s agenda, the former Reagan adviser said that the GOP must begin offering results.

“If there’s no real production here by the time you get to 2018, they could have a problem,” he said, noting that much of the blame falls on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

“I do think this is deliberate on the part of McConnell and Ryan, I believe. I mean really, I agree — we see them out there all the time, especially Ryan out there talking, ‘We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that,'” Buchanan said. “And if there’s no real production here by the time you get past the end of this session and into the new year, I think they’re going to have real problems.”