Is Donald Trump Pat Buchanan redux? Sure, Buchanan is outwardly pious, while Trump is . . . well, Trump. (Nobody ever doubted Buchanan's anti-abortion bona fides, for example.) And while Buchanan, whatever you make of his politics, is undeniably a serious intellectual, Trump . . . well, at the very least, he did go to an Ivy League school!
That said, Trump's current campaign and Buchanan's in 1992 and 1996 have some deep similarities. Both are motivated by economic nationalism and hostility to immigration, illegal and otherwise.
So what accounts for Trump's doing better than Buchanan ever did? The New York construction magnate is polling around 40 percent nationally, after all, whereas Buchanan won about 20 percent, nationally, in his two 1990s runs.
Sure, Trump is an unusually charismatic. And he has a built-in fan base from The Apprentice that Buchanan's regular appearances on Crossfire hardly match.
But there's another factor at play, I think: Over the quarter century that has passed since Buchanan's first presidential run, the United States has become much more deeply saturated by immigrants. For that reason, opposition to immigration has much more salience, nationwide, than it did in Buchanan's day.