Former GOP Insurgent Pat Buchanan Says Trump Isn't Going Anywhere

While Clinton supporters prepare themselves for a White House run, safely ensconced from a bruising primary fight, Republicans are worried. An outsider candidate is taking the party by storm, railing against the GOP establishment and worrying the party elite while garnering headlines for his anti-immigrant views.

This is not just Donald Trump in 2016. It was Pat Buchanan in 1996. 

Buchanan went on to win the New Hampshire primary that year, and warned the Beltway establishment of the "peasants" marching on the capitol, pitchforks in hand.

Donald Trump is waging an insurgency of his own, running a campaign he says speaks for the "Silent Majority" of Americans, a phrase Buchanan himself coined when he worked as an adviser for President Richard Nixon in 1969.

Buchanan told WNYC's Jami Floyd that Trump isn't misappropriating the "Silent Majority" banner, and that he has clearly struck a chord with a certain segment of Republican voters.

"When you see the establishment in utter panic at the things he says, whereas the base...finally feel they have a voice," said Buchanan. "Donald Trump is speaking for the views of tens of millions of Americans who feel that the establishment ignores them once elections are over."

And unlike his own outsider campaign in 1996, which ultimately could not compete with better-financed candidates, Buchanan said it's not an unrealistic expectation for Trump to win the GOP's 2016 nomination.

 "Trump is...the front-runner," said Buchanan. "I was never the front-runner. He's been the front-runner for six months!" 

Buchanan said GOP voters are clamoring for a candidate who exists apart from the party elite, and that he sees Ted Cruz as Trump's most likely competition for the nomination.