Reader Mitchell Day forwarded the quote above, which he happened to see on a popular quote site, and was able to trace it to the 1996 battle between the Republican Establishment and Pitchfork Pat Buchanan.

The Castle Storms Back

By Lloyd Grove February 23, 1996

William Kristol sees no need for the Republican Establishment to succumb, in Pat Buchanan's phrase, to "terminal panic." A junior member of that Establishment, Kristol doesn't cower when the high-riding presidential contender thunders about terrified knights and barons of the GOP being chased into their castles by pitchfork-wielding peasants.

"Someone needs to stand up and defend the Establishment," says Kristol, a sometime strategist, party ideologist and the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. "In the last couple of weeks, there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, the people — that is, the people's will, their prejudices and their foolish opinions. And in a certain sense, we're all paying the price for that now. . . . After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons."

The Republican aristocracy, per Buchanan, is a well-heeled group of elected officials, lobbyists for multinational corporations, political operatives, spin doctors and the like — a club supremely comfortable with power. But it has been violently rattled by the eruption of Buchanan's support in New Hampshire, where he won the venerated First Primary.

Kristol and friends succeeded in getting a normal, very dull, Republican (Bob Dole) as the nominee. He lost.

In 2006, Kristol supported amnesty against an estimated 70 percent of the American people. When Hillary came out with her "basket of deplorables" speech, he could see she was committing political suicide and  Tweeted this: "Hillary Clinton's creed: "All men are created equal" — except for those I've consigned to the basket of deplorables, who are irredeemable." to which I replied as follows"

When Bill Kristol thinks you’ve gone too far in insulting ordinary Americans, you’ve lost…whatever he still represents.

Kristol, as we keep reminding you, is the author of Y is for Yahoo [The Weekly Standard April 2006] in which he said

“How many Republicans will have the courage to stand up and prevent the yahoos from driving the party off a cliff?”

The problem is that in voter terms, there are a lot of “yahoos” out there. The majority of Americans agree with Trump on illegal immigration, and have for years.

That includes, of course, 1996, where the boring Republican Bob Dole lost 8 million votes to Trumpian third party candidate Ross Perot—which would not have happened to Buchanan.