# Does Patrick Buchanan get a bad rap? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 30, 2003, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538 "2003-10-30T23:10:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/1 "2003-10-30T23:10:33Z")
Like most leftists, I’m against practically everything Patrick Buchanan believes in, but it still seems to me he gets a bad rap. Everybody thinks he’s a racist and an anti-semite. Some even assume he’s a Holocaust-denier. I’ve only read one of Buchanan’s books: _The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invations Imperil Our Country and Civilization_ (Thomas Dunne Books, 2001). From this book I get the impression that Buchanan longs for the days before the immigration reforms of the '60s, when we had national-origin quotas that made sure practically all our immigrants were white Europeans. But he never actually comes out and says that nonwhites are inferior or undesirable; he seems to be talking about preserving our nation’s present **cultural** character, not its **racial** character; same with Europe. He does harp some on the African-American crime rate, but only to make the point that the American media underreports it and therefore must be biased in a liberal direction. I know Buchanan wrote a book I’ve never read, _A Republic, Not an Empire,_ which argues the U.S. should have stayed out of World War II. I can see how that attitude would disgust Jews, but does it make him an anti-semite? What he is, is a consistent isolationist. He is also opposed to the current U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Is that necessarily because we are there to, among other things, defend Israel? I’ve looked at Buchanan’s website, [http://www.theamericancause.org/[/ur]](http://www.theamericancause.org/%5B/ur%5D), and that of his right-populist, isolationist America First Party, [http://www.americafirstparty.org/](http://www.americafirstparty.org/), and neither bears any resemblance to Stormfront that I can see. So why do so many liberals assume Buchanan is a racist? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/2 "2003-10-30T23:20:11Z")
Sorry, let me do that again: I’ve looked at Buchanan’s website, [http://www.theamericancause.org/;](http://www.theamericancause.org/;) and the website of his right-populist America First Party, [http://www.americafirstparty.org/;](http://www.americafirstparty.org/;) and neither bears any resemblance to “Stormfront” ([http://www.stormfront.org/](http://www.stormfront.org/)) that I can see. Neither does Buchanan’s new weekly magazine, _The American Conservative_ ([http://www.amconmag.com/](http://www.amconmag.com/)). It seems to me Buchanan is staking out a new independent position in American politics: conservative nativist-isolationist populism. (A very **old** position, actually – it goes back to the prewar America First! movement and even to the 19th-century Populists – but it has gone a long time without its own institutional representation.) He’s against liberals of all kinds (with the possible except of Libertarians, if they count), but he’s also against the pro-big-business Republicans, and the foreign-policy neoconservative warhawks – the latter two, of course, being the principal forces in the Bush Administration. He might even be willing to make strategic alliances with leftist pacifists to oppose the war. How racist is that? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/3 "2003-10-30T23:44:09Z")
Just goes to show that the lefties and conservative nativists are equally wrong!🙂 PB argues for the superiority of Western European culture over other cultures. This is contrary to the cultural relativism popular with much of the left. You won’t be hearing PB talk about celebrating diversity. And he’s staunchly anit-Affirmative Action, which is often equated with racism. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/4 "2003-10-30T23:52:51Z")
I should add… PB represents the kind of conservatism that a libertarian minded person such as myself finds very distasteful. His religious, nativist, populist positions are not the kind of freedom promoting conservatism that I can support. Is he racist? I don’t know. I somehow suspect he’d be less than thrilled if his daughter married a non-caucasian. But that’s just a guess. If the guy was a religious, nativist, populist, maybe he’d be OK with it. ---
**Author:** ![\_possum\_stalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/_/b77776/32.png) [@\_possum\_stalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/_possum_stalker)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/5 "2003-10-31T01:21:11Z")
Gee, I [dunno](http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/2437). Read all the awesome things he has said and decide youself. I don;t think they note in the article that he asked, and was nominated to be, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa under Ford. He has tried to reform his image, most notably in 2000, when he ran for Prez with Ezola Foster as his running mate: “Foster, 62, is a retired public school educator and a little-known conservative political activist. She was also not Buchanan’s top choice to be his runningmate. Buchanan freely admitted he settled on Foster only after Teamsters Union President James P. Hoffa, Congressman Jim Traficant (D-OH) and several others all rejected his invitation to run on his ticket. Buchanan said his choice of Foster – an African-American woman – as a runningmate should end the “myths and nonsense” alleging bigotry, sexism and racism on his part.”- [this site](http://www.politics1.com/buchanan.htm) ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/6 "2003-10-31T02:10:23Z")
Though I disagree with his position on the war on drugs, I like Pat. And heres why: I think that he truely, and deeply believes in the issues he’s pushing. He’s not wishy/washy on anything. But what’s significant is, he believes in those issues because he personally believes in them, not because some PAC gave the most money to his campaign fund or because the public winds are blowing one way or another. I’ve observed that while many politicians have core beliefs, those beliefs can be swayed by special intrest or polls. Not Pat. He believes in these things and sticks by them. Love him or hate him, I have to respect him for being that way. Also, I’ve been to campaign rallays going all the way back to Ford. PB’s were the most fun I’ve ever been to. A blast! I went to one in '96. The cracks he was making about Clinton were a laugh riot. I think he shook up the Republican party when it needed it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/7 "2003-10-31T02:46:38Z")
I checked out **'possum stalker’s** cite ([http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/2437](http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/2437)) – and, my word! Looks like Pat might actually be a Holocaust-denier after all! A moderate one, anyway. From the cited article, by Jeff Cohen of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, which ran in the _Baltimore Sun_ on October 3, 1999: > [@](#): > > On the issue of the Nazi extermination of Jews, Buchanan is unique as a national figure who has challenged basic facts of the Holocaust and opposed the effort to prosecute war criminals. In 1987, columnist Buchanan urged Ronald Reagan to shut down the Justice Department office pursuing Nazi war criminals - which Buchanan ridiculed for “running down 70-year-old camp guards.” > > Decrying “group fantasies of martyrdom,” Buchanan questioned the historical record that thousands of Jews at Treblinka had been gassed by diesel exhaust: “Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody,” he wrote in a 1990 column. Not only was he wrong on the science, but when asked to provide a source for his claims on Treblinka, the best Buchanan could answer - “Somebody sent it to me.” It turned out that he was circulating one of the canards of those who claim the death camps were a Zionist invention. > > Another current Buchanan controversy surrounds his accusations about Jewish influence over foreign policy. Back in 1985, as White House Communications Director, Buchanan pushed hard for President Reagan to visit the cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where Nazi SS troops are buried - and reportedly wrote the controversial line in Reagan’s speech that the SS soldiers were “victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” The trip went forward despite broad protests, including complaints made at a White House meeting by American Jewish leaders, who claim Buchanan lectured them to start acting like Americans first. > > In 1990, many Americans opposed the drive toward war in the Persian Gulf; Buchanan was one of the few critics who saw a Jewish plot. “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East - the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States,” he asserted on TV’s “McLaughlin Group.” While dozens of powerful pundit and policy voices advocated war with Iraq, Buchanan felt the need to single out four saber-rattlers - A.M. Rosenthal, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer and Henry Kissinger - all Jews. > > Here again Buchanan’s apparent prejudices about Jews seemed to blind him to the facts. On the key January 1991 Capitol Hill vote authorizing war in the Gulf, most Jewish members of Congress voted no - on Buchanan’s side, not Kissinger’s. > > Fears about Israeli plotting in Washington D.C. remained evident during Buchanan’s 1996 run for the presidency. On his campaign web site, an article blamed the death of Clinton Administration aide Vincent Foster on the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. The article, which alleged that Foster and Hillary Clinton were Mossad spies, was removed after a Jewish news service reported on it. And regarding African-Americans: > [@](#): > > In his 1988 autobiography, Right from the Beginning, on race relations in the late 1940s and early 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.” > > In his autobiography, Buchanan - who has opposed virtually every civil rights law or court decision of recent decades - boasted that as an editorial writer for a conservative daily in the 1960s, he had published FBI smears of Martin Luther King Jr. as his own editorials: “We were among Hoover’s conduits to the American people.” > > A 1969 memo from then-White House advisor Buchanan urged President Richard Nixon not to visit “the Widow King” on the first anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King: “Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.” > > In another Buchanan memo to Nixon: “There is a legitimate grievance in my view of white working-class people that every time, on every issue, that the black militants loud-mouth it, we come up with more money… If we can give 50 Phantoms [jet fighters] to the Jews, and a multi-billion dollar welfare program for the blacks…why not help the Catholics save their collapsing school system.” (Note the equation of the State of Israel with “the Jews” - and welfare with “the blacks.”) > > In a 1988 column, Buchanan issued his oft-repeated assertion that President Reagan had done so much for African-Americans that civil rights groups have no reason to exist: “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.’” > > In a 1989 column sympathizing with the views of ex-Klansman David Duke, Buchanan scolded the Republican Party for overreacting to Duke and his Nazi “costume”: “Take a hard look at Duke’s portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks.” > > In a 1990 column that attempted to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion that “white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this.” A 1989 column referred admiringly to the apartheid regime as the “Boer Republic”: “Why are Americans collaborating in a UN conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions?” All this is a long, long way from lobbying to bring back Jim Crow or deport the Jews – but still! I really wonder how deep these attitudes run among others in the conservative-populist movement Buchanan is trying to lead. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/8 "2003-10-31T02:51:09Z")
I also wonder if Buchanan is at all bothered by historical memories of a time – a long, long time – when **Roman Catholics** were a despised minority in the United States! What say you, Pat, you lousy papist mackerel-snapper? ---
**Author:** ![\_possum\_stalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/_/b77776/32.png) [@\_possum\_stalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/_possum_stalker)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/9 "2003-10-31T03:43:42Z")
I like the fact that he brags about his youthful brawls with the police in his autobiography. Also, Jim Traficant (who he originally wanted as his running mate in 2000) is in now in jail for bribery. Pat knows how to pick 'em. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/10 "2003-10-31T06:23:26Z")
He’s an interesting person, especially when you consider that he might very well be Deep Throat. But he is bigot. There is just no way to be a rational human being who lived as an adult during the middle of the 20th Century in the USA – and deny that the Holocaust happened. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/11 "2003-10-31T06:29:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BrainGlutton \* > \*\*I really wonder how deep these attitudes run among others in the conservative-populist movement Buchanan is trying to lead. \*\* The key word there is “trying”. Considering Buchanan’s performance in the last election–in which he barely beat Harry Browne despite spending $13 million and getting help from the Butterfly Ballot–the movement he’s trying to lead doesn’t appear to exist. So it’s kind of hard to say what attitudes the people in the “movement” hold. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/12 "2003-10-31T10:41:27Z")
Pat is also a creationist, in one debate about evolution he said “you may be a descendant of a monkey but I am a child of God.” ---
**Author:** ![RTA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b4bc9f/32.png) [@RTA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTA)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/13 "2003-10-31T13:40:31Z")
I’ll always remember that speech where he glorified the “locked and loaded” status of the riot police facing down the mobs of angry blacks in So. Central LA. The inference was that only a real man could fire into a crowd of unarmed civilians. That having been said, I find him a compelling speaker and he’s one of the few conservative talking heads whose opinions I’ll respect and entertain. Nobody can argue that he’s a genuine patriot. Plus he did such a great job screwing up the Bush '92 campaign, and is certainly no fan of Junior. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/14 "2003-10-31T15:05:49Z")
He’s also one of those people who scapegoats abortion as the cause of many of society’s problems. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/15 "2003-10-31T16:04:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by John Mace \* > \*\*I should add… > > PB represents the kind of conservatism that a libertarian minded person such as myself finds very distasteful. His religious, nativist, populist positions are not the kind of freedom promoting conservatism that I can support. \*\* Yeah, that evil POPULISM! OOOOOOOH! How DARE he actually think that those MERE COMMONERS have any RIGHT AT ALL to political representation. Everybody with the least bit of morals and intelligence knows in their hearts that only the INTELLECTUAL ELITE deserves to have things like a right to vote! Why, populism is EVIL! It gives us things like trade unions, The Grange, and other horrid travesties. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/16 "2003-10-31T17:53:11Z")
As the above cites indicate, Buchanan has taken some stands over the years that make it pretty hard to defend him against charges of anti-semitism. At the very least, it seems to bias his selection of grievances: the only criminals’ rights I’ve ever heard him express concern for are those of Nazi war criminals. I’ve also marveled at his faux-populism: here’s a guy born in Washington, privately schooled in Washington, went to college (Georgetown) in Washington, worked for the Nixon White House, portraying himself as a peasant with a pitchfork, out to get those nasty beltway insiders. One thing you invariably hear from his colleagues of liberal ideology: he’s a very nice guy in private, but starts breathing fire when the cameras turn on. Some interpret this to mean that his true personality is the nice guy, and his nastier side is an abberation. However, (and I know this is totally anecdotal), I heard differently from a woman I dated a few years ago. She was related to Buchanan by marriage (her mother had married one of his brothers). She claimed the public Buchanan was much more like the one she knew, and it was the nice-guy persona that was an act. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2003, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/17 "2003-10-31T18:03:43Z")
I may be the only person on the boards to have met him. He’s very funny in person. Joking and friendly. Seems very open. I disagree with a great many of his stands but I’ll tell you this…the man **believes**. He believes with such a large belief that it makes you long for politicians who are just in it for the money and girls. And you should have seen his eyes get wide when I said, “Well, your politics are to the right of most of mine. But on the other hand you’re well left of me on several issues.” Man, was that great. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2003, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/18 "2003-11-01T02:15:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Icerigger \* > \*\*Pat is also a creationist, in one debate about evolution he said “you may be a descendant of a monkey but I am a child of God.” \*\* _snort_ More like a red-headed stepchild of God. ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2003, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/19 "2003-11-01T02:39:21Z")
Think of this: George W won the election despite kicking Buchanan to the curb. Buchanan (and Nader to an extent) efffectively marginalized the third party concept out of the mainstream. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2003, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538/20 "2003-11-08T01:27:40Z")
> [@](#): > > _BrainGlutton_ > > From this book I get the impression that Buchanan longs for the days before the immigration reforms of the '60s, when we had national-origin quotas that made sure practically all our immigrants were white Europeans. But he never actually comes out and says that nonwhites are inferior or undesirable; he seems to be talking about preserving our nation’s present cultural character, not its racial character; same with Europe. Even the zany Eastern Europeans who dance for fun? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-patrick-buchanan-get-a-bad-rap/210538.md?page=2)