Pat Buchanan
Patrick Joseph Buchanan (born November 2, 1938), usually known as Pat Buchanan, is a conservative journalist, alleged racist, and television political commentator from the United States. In 2000, he ran for President of the United States on the Reform Party ticket. He has previously run for President on Republican Party tickets, although he has never received that party's nomination.
Buchanan was born in Washington, D.C. and educated in Roman Catholic schools before attending Georgetown University where he graduated with a degree in English and Philosophy in 1961. He then attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City where he earned a Master's Degree in Journalism in 1962. That same year he became an editorial writer for the St. Louis Globe Democrat newspaper.
Buchanan was an early supporter of Richard Nixon's political comeback, from 1966 on acting as advisor to Nixon's campaigns and accompanying Nixon to the White House in the role of advisor until 1974. He briefly continued in this role with Nixon's successor Gerald Ford. Buchanan has been mentioned as one possibility for the identity of "Deep Throat" in the Watergate scandal.
After leaving political office, Pat Buchanan became a syndicated political columnist and began his regular appearances as a commentator on various national television news shows, including The McLaughlin Group and Crossfire.
Buchanan returned to the White House in 1985, serving as White House Communications Director during the Ronald Reagan administration until 1987.
In 1992 he unsuccessfully challenged George H. W. Bush for the Republican Party Presidential nomination, garnering some 3 million votes in primaries. He again tried for the Republican nomination in 1996, finishing second behind Bob Dole. In 2000 he successfully gained the nomination of the Reform Party, although his nomination was tainted with allegations of unethical tactics and challenges from the John Hagelin camp in many states. He finished fourth with 0.4% of the popular vote (Hagelin garnered 0.1%). Buchanan's nomination as Reform's leader was very controversial within the party, as many of the party's supporters, among other reasons, did not see Buchanan's image as a Nixon Watergate scandal "plumber" as consistent with the party's mission statement, championed by the party's founder and previous leader, Ross Perot.
Buchanan has written five books on his political and religious views.
He and liberal Bill Press cohosted Buchanan & Press on American cable channel MSNBC until it was cancelled in November 2003. Buchanan is still with MSNBC as an analyst and he occasionally fills in for Joe Scarborough on the nightly show "Scarborough Country". He is also one of the founding editors of and main contributors to The American Conservative magazine.
Buchanan's Politics
Although considered to be a staunch right-wing conservative, Buchanan believes the Republicans have largely abandoned their conservative principles, and are instead embracing bland, inoffensive positions on most of the major issues. Many of his positions are in line with conservative U.S. Republicans of the first half of the 20th century, but have become uncommon in the Republican mainstream in recent generations.
Buchanan is an open isolationist, is in favor of severely restricting immigration into the United States, and of repealing NAFTA and raising tariffs on imported goods to protect domestic industry. He is also a harsh critic of American foreign policy and believes that most of America's international actions starting with World War 2 have been unjustified, being largely motivated by imperialist desires. Buchanan's belief that the German Nazi regime was not a threat to American interests or national safety have made some of his critics accuse him of being an apologist for the fascist state. Buchanan has a record of anti-Semitic comments. William Bennett has described Pat as "flirting with fascism" and Alan Keyes accused Buchanan staffers of appealing to racist and anti-Semitic voters. He has said that the Holocaust was barbaric and a tragedy; he also has been known to flirt with Holocaust Revisionism. In a March 17, 1990 column, he claimed that the diesel engines used to suffocate inmates at Treblinka could "not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody." Buchanan believes that the Nazi regime in Germany and the Soviet regime in Russia would have in time annihilated each other, and thus America's contribution was not necessary, and may have in fact even been counter-productive.
Because of the way his views differ from those of "mainstream" conservatives, Buchanan is often described as a paleoconservative, referring to himself as a "traditional conservative".
Criticisms and Allegations of Racism
Pat Buchanan's politics are derided by many in America. Some segments of society considers Pat Buchanan to be a racist. Evidence supporting such claims comes primarily from his speeches and his actions.
The first example stretches back to the Nixon administration, when Pat Buchanan urged President Richard Nixon not to visit the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
Pat Buchanan has also criticized Multiculturalism frequently, calling it a "threat" and an "all-out assault" on American heritage. He has also called on his supporters to wage a "Cultural Warfare" to purge America of "foreign values".
Finally, his views of Hitler and Nazi Germany's threat during the Second World War to the US is also considered to be, at best, Nazi Revisionism or Anti-Semitic at worst.
Quotes
On abortion:
- "I don't care about the circumstances of a child's conception. You want to execute somebody in the case of rape, execute the rapist and let the unborn child live." - From the New York Times [2/24/96]
On race relations in the 1940s and 1950s:
- "There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The 'negroes' of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours." - From Right from the Beginning, Buchanan's 1988 autobiography [p. 131]
From an April 1969 memo where Buchanan urges President Nixon not to visit Martin Luther King's widow on the first anniversary of King's death:
- "[this visit would] outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse... Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history." - From New York Daily News [10/1/90]
On civil rights groups:
- "George Bush should have told the [NAACP convention] that black America has grown up; that the NAACP should close up shop, that its members should go home and reflect on JFK's admonition: 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for your country.'" - From his syndicated coloumn [7/26/88]
On the United Nations and other international organizations:
- "We believe "independence forever." We will reclaim every lost ounce of American sovereignty. We will lead this country out of the WTO, out of the IMF, and I will personally tell Kofi Annan: Your UN lease has run out; you will be moving out of the United States, and if you are not gone by year's end, I will send you ten thousand Marines to help you pack your bags." - From his Reform Party acceptance speech [8/14/00]
On the US's move to sanction apartheid South Africa:
- "Why are Americans collaborating in a U.N. conspiracy to ruin [South Africa] with sanctions?" - From his syndicated column [9/17/89]
On race and people of color:
- "There is nothing wrong with us sitting down and arguing that issue that we are a European country." - From Newsday [11/15/92]
On affirmative-action:
- "How, then, can the feds justify favoring sons of Hispanics over sons of white Americans who fought in World War II or Vietnam?" - From his syndicated column [1/23/95]
On multiculturalism:
- "...an across-the-board assault on our Anglo-American heritage." - From a speech given to the Christian Coalition in September 1993
On Capitol Hill:
- "Israeli occupied territory" - From the St. Louis Post Dispatch [10/20/90]
On Adolf Hitler:
- "...an individual of great courage...Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path." - From a 1977 syndicated column as reported by The Guardian [1/14/92]
On other religions:
- "Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free." - From a speech given to the Christian Coalition in September 1993, as reported by an ADL 1994 report
On homosexuals:
- "Homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy. The reason public men rarely say aloud what most say privately is they are fearful of being branded 'bigots' by an intolerant liberal orthodoxy that holds, against all evidence and experience, that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle." - From a syndicated column [9/3/89]
- "Homosexuality is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family." - From New Republic [3/30/92]
On women:
- "Rail as they will about 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." - From a syndicated column [11/22/83]
- "The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer." - From Right from the Beginning [p. 149]
On Spanish dictator Francisco Franco:
- "Catholic savior" - From Right from the Beginning
On running for president in 1996:
- "You just wait until 1996, then you'll see a real right-wing tyrant." - From The Nation [6/26/95]