The loser in a hard-fought primary fight swallows his pride and differences with the front-runner and wholeheartedly endorses him for the good of the Republican Party.

Ted Cruz, 2016? Try Pat Buchanan, 1992.

After falling short in his bid to unseat George H.W. Bush in 1992, Buchanan took the stage at the Republican National Convention and urged his “Buchanan Brigades” to “come home and stand beside George Bush.”

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On “The Laura Ingraham Show” Wednesday, Buchanan called upon disappointed Cruz supporters and other Republicans leery of Donald Trump to do the same.

BUCHANAN: I believe they should. I mean, many of them feel it very deeply — some feel they just can’t do it. But I think if you look at the overall interest of conservatism, whatever your view of what it is, it certainly is not Hillary Rodham Clinton as president of United States and filling upcoming vacancies on the Supreme Court. And she’s the antithesis of what conservatism is.

Some of these folks, I go back to the Goldwater years, and I was very much for Barry Goldwater, and I remember in 1964, [Nelson] Rockefeller and Gov. [George] Romney of Michigan and Gov. [William] Scranton and all walked away, wouldn’t endorse him, wouldn’t wear, you know, a Goldwater button. And Richard Nixon got in his F-27 with Shelley Scarney, my future wife, Rose Woods, and one or two others. And went around about 100,000 miles in a little F-27 trying to fight for everybody in the party, including Goldwater. And Goldwater, after they lost, came around and endorsed him. In other words, if you want a future in the Republican Party, I think you have to endorse its nominee, and you have to vote for its nominee. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to ask the followers of that nominee to support you in future years. [lz_related_box id=”135153″]

So I think self-interest, as well as the interest of the party and the interest of the country, I think dictate getting behind Donald Trump.

INGRAHAM: There’s a platform to be written. I have a view that [Alabama Sen.] Jeff Sessions and his team should be put in charge of writing the GOP platform, with other important inputs. But how important is that for Trump?

BUCHANAN: I think it’s very important, especially as you know … we had a big battle in the 90s when I ran those three races, those two races, and we got out there … demanded structures on the border to defend against what seemed to be a rising invasion from Mexico. And they got it in the platform. And you know the battles Phyllis Schlafly and others of us have had over the years to maintain, if you will, the cultural traditionalism and right-to-life plank.

And I think that Donald Trump, clearly his people should go out there and battle to include the new ideas, if you will, you know, Trumpism, in terms of foreign policy and in terms of securing the borders and trade. But I think they ought to be willing to compromise with folks so they can maintain these traditional things. And we can all get behind the idea that we need justices like Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. If there’s a will, I think there’s a way to deal with that issue.