Campaign 2016: Trump, Bernie and the Peasants with Pitchforks

By Joel Achenbach August 12 at 1:36 PM

I was there for the “peasants with pitchforks” speech. Pat Buchanan was holding forth in a crowded room at the Sheraton Hotel in Nashua, N.H., a couple of days before the 1996 GOP primary. The Republican Establishment’s favorite for the nomination was Bob Dole, but Dole, for all his solid credentials and admirable history as a war hero and congressional leader, was never someone to incite a political fever, never one to tap the more visceral emotions of the rowdy electorate.

So here came Buchanan, the TV pundit and unapologetic nativist, and in the icy environs of the New Hampshire primary he was a glowing coal of anti-Establishment fury. But he was also having a ball, relishing every moment, improvising the whole thing — a guy with nothing to lose. Toward the end of his stump speech, he uttered what became his most famous line:

“We shocked them in Alaska. And stunned them in Louisiana. And then stunned them again in Iowa. And they are in a terminal panic in Washington. They are frightened. They hear — ha ha — they hear the shouts of the peasants from over the hill. You watch the Establishment, all the knights and barons will be riding into the castle, pulling up the drawbridge in a minute. And they’re comin’! All the peasants are comin’ with pitchforks after them! So we’re going to take this — we’re going to take this over the top.”

(This is quoted imprecisely on Buchanan’s Wikipedia page. I have transcribed it from the C-SPAN coverage; see minute 34.)

Here’s my 1996 report on the Buchanan rally:

Buchanan’s candidacy is the perfect example of how a campaign is like an insurrection. His raucous rally today in Nashua wasn’t a slick campaign event by any means: It was just energy.