The last time the phrase “Los Angeles riots” dominated the national headlines, Patrick Buchanan told a story about order being restored to the city.

“The mob retreated because it had met that one thing that could stop it,” he said at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. “Force, rooted in justice and backed by moral courage.”

President Donald Trump has been compared to Buchanan before. As streets burn in Los Angeles in defiance of federal immigration law, he may have the opportunity for his ultimate Buchananite moment as he sends in the National Guard.

These Los Angeles riots are even less defensible than those of more than three decades ago. Nearly all big-city riots end up only doing more damage to communities that are already hurting. These mobs are attacking the very legitimacy of immigration and border enforcement.

Republicans didn’t win the 1992 presidential election. In fact, they lost California in the Electoral College for the first time since the country went all the way with LBJ, the last president to federalize the National Guard against the will of a Democratic governor, back in 1965. The aftershocks of the 1990–91 recession, compounded by a promise-breaking tax increase signed into law by the GOP incumbent, still lingered. 

Instead of Buchanan, Republicans renominated the incumbent who broke his pledge not to raise taxes, presided over the recession, and generally seemed more interested in the New World Order than American domestic affairs.