Pat Buchanan?

General Questions
#1

I detest politics and avoid these discussions whenever possible. But I understand Pat Buchanan in running for president next year. I’ve heard of him but I don’t know if what I’ve heard about him is true. A lot of people, usually in the form of jokes, liken him to the KKK, Hitler, and so on. What does he really stand for? Does he have racist policies or are these broad jokes with no basis in fact? Seems like he’s a big target for these kinds of jokes, along with Jesse Helms (whom I also know nothing about), so I was just curious.

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

#2

All you really need to know about Pat is that he was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and (I believe) came up with the “nattering nabobs of negativism” comment used by the lovely and fragrant Spiro Agnew.

If you insist on learning more, you must read Al Franken’s “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.”

“A friend will help you move house. A best friend will help you move a body.”–Alexi Sayle

#3

Buchanan is a fairly right-wing newspaper columnist/TV political commentator. He also espouses things like strong protective tariffs. His style is in-your-face and his speech at the Republican convention turned a lot of people off to the party and helped Clinton win.

He’s not KKK like David Duke, and probably isn’t the most rabid right-wing Republican running, but he’s too far out politically to garner any substantial voter base. This makes him an easy target, especially since reporters see him as fair game.

www.sff.net/people/rothman

#4

GASP So was Ben Stein! I like “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” but that’s neither here nor there.

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

#5

I’d like to know, too. He used to represent “the right” on CNN’s Crossfire. I’m fairly
liberal (as in Libertarian) but P.B. actually argued a couple of issues effectively enough to change my opinion. I don’t know if he always espoused the viewpoint he argued from, but he was pretty hardline ‘conservative’ on the show.

#6

Pat Buchanan is one of the great promoters of political dichomoty. He divides the U.S. population into two groups: “us” (meaning himself and other conservative, preferably white, heterosexual Christians, who are “real Americans”); and “them” (meaning everybody else, who are presumably all commie pinko liberal anti-Americans).

The joking references linking him to the KKK and Hitler are satiric exaggerations, but they do have a point. In his rhetoric against the evil “them,” he sometimes finds himself attacking people who are also the targets of neo-Nazis and Klansmen. Of course, he doesn’t promote lynching and genocide, but short of outright criminal activity, he doesn’t spend much of his time objecting to the philosophies of these groups. Comparatively speaking, this makes him seem (even if only inadvertently) more sympathetic to them than to (for example) homosexual fighting for equal rights.

#7

I’m 180 degrees removed from Pat’s political leanings, but I don’t think he’s a racist in the David Duke sense. However, Buchanan has advocated curbing immigration, and many people believe he’s really saying that the U.S. should restrict itself to “our kind”, namely European Christians, preferably those who already speak English.

#8

Hey Gr8Kat,

You mentioned that you like the show “Win Ben Stein’s Money”, but did you know that I’ve heard that Art Bell enjoys this same show?..nah, just kidding, but maybe he really does though…

Back on topic:

Pat Buchanan - back in the heat of the Clinton scandal(s) when I was having daily arguments with conservative Republican Clinton haters on this other board that I go to I occasionally would throw old Pat or something he said into their faces. Of course Pat is such an ass that they’d back off a little bit and scramble to disassociate their politics and political affiliation with him. Now does that little ancedote tell you anything about the man? He even embarasses his own party!

The other guy I used to use was Gary Bauer. He’s the President of some right-wing organization that hides behind a name something like “Americans for family values” or some misleading crap like that…

If you ask me, they are both extremist assholes that want (as someone already pointed out) everyone to be just like them and their personal ideals.

A few folks where going to great lengths last week to convince me that Art Bell was “dangerous”…no, I have seen dangerous and it is Pat Buchanan, Gary Bauer, and their cronies in the extreme right-wing.

Contestant #3

#9

IMHO, Pat Buchanan represents the worst of both worlds: he’s socially conservative and fiscally liberal (well… fiscally protectionist anyway). Some of his economic ideas sound downright un-Republican. He vehemently opposes any sort of free trade policy. As such, he appeals to white, blue-collar, christian folks who decry the moral decay of the nation but who are also afraid of the big corporate fat-cats shipping their jobs to Mexico (not to mention being afraid of Mexicans coming here and taking their jobs). I also find it amazing that he blatantly uses the phrase “America First”, thereby associating himself with the organization back in the '30’s (which included some Nazi sympathizers) that wanted to keep the U.S. out of World War II.

Oh, and let’s not forget: Pat Buchanan trounced George Bush in the New Hampshire Primary back in '92. Scary!

“For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes” - Francis Bacon

#10

Pat Buchanan is an extremely conservative Republican who takes the general ultra-conservative positions (anti-gun-control; anti-abortion; anti-immigration) and extrapolates them to ends that many observers find absurd (such as advocating that a great big wall be put up on the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent illegal Mexican immigration). He’s also a big gas-bag, giving exhorting, inflammatory speeches that play on the theme of America being under attack, but such speeches are remarkably thin on actual substance, once you get by the rhetoric. It’s the combination of his conservative politics and his combined paranoid and over-wrought speechifying that leads to the comparisons to Hitler – such as Molly Iven’s comment that while she understood his address, she imagined it sounded better in the original German. I don’t think she (or other commentators)really think he’s a Nazi.

#11

The most hilarious thing about Pat Buchanan is how he has done an about-face and become a communist sympathizer in his knee-jerk support of Slobodon Milosevich. Buchanan is so single-minded in his outright hatred of the Clinton administration, he has become a walking, talking oxymoron. Unfortunately, if you listen to the way the right-wing radio shows are eating up his paradoxocal diatribes, they apparently don’t see the enormous credibility lapse as he continues to flog Clinton with anything he can lay his hands on. One can only hope that, as the bull-dog of the right-wingers, his insistence on pushing the public’s nose into the turds of Whitewater/Lewinsky/Kosovo will create a backlash and derail support for any Republicans, conservative or moderate.

TT

“Equal Opportunity means everybody has the same chance at being incompetent.”
–Dr. Lawrence J. Peter

#12

I believe “Nattering nabobs of negativism” was the work of William Safire, who was an Agnew speech writer. “Nabob” is not part of Pat’s vocabulary.

#13

I’m not sure if Pat is an oxymoron, but I’m positive he’s a moron. :slight_smile:

#14

Pat Buchanan is Joe McCarthy reincarnated. He exists, politically speaking, only to feed the fears of those who would listen to him. If he finds himself in upcoming presidential fray, I have only this to say: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

#15

Buchanan sure is evil, but I’m not sure he’s inconsistant. From what I can tell, he’s so reactionary, he’s practically fascist. As much as he hates Commies, he can probably sympathize with ethnic cleansing.

#16

He’s actually said this in so many words. A few years ago he rhetorically asked his listeners to consider who would fit in better in this country, Zulu or English immigrants.

#17

Evidentally he’s somewhat of a Holocaust denier, too. I did a little Internet research (not that I doubt your opinions or fine minds) and found that in 1990 he made a statement that he didn’t believe people could have been killed in the manner that Jews were killed at Treblinka (ie, asphyxiated with diesel fumes). Holocaust deniers try to undermine the horror of the Holocaust by questioning all of the details–could people have really been killed this way? Did 6,000,000 people die or was it really “only” 5,000,000 or 4,000,000? Did Hitler really order the execution of Jews in writing? And so on…

To think he could in any way be aligned with these scum makes my blood boil.

For more info, see http://www.skepdic.com/nazism.html
http://www.galaxycast.com/galaxy_editorials/editorial4.html

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

#18

I have to take issue here, Gr8Kat. The Holocaust deniers that I have heard claim that the entire Holocaust was some big hoax, which is, of course, a load of crap. I have never heard the quote you mention, but “I don’t think that you could kill thousands of people with diesel fumes” is not logically equivalent to “I don’t believe there was a holocaust.” Perhaps Pat Buchanon was doubting that the Nazis would have used this method (I thought they used cyanide gas or nerve gasses. Diesel exhaust is certainly not the most toxic substance they had available.) Can you provide a cite for the quote? Perhaps the exact wording will help.

“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island

#19

I read the article from the second URL, and the author makes the logical fallacy I describe in my first response. While people have killed themselves with car exhaust, this is the kind of method you choose when you’re hoping someone will come along and stop you. Mass execution by truck fumes just seems to strike me as an amaturish way to kill people. And we know the Nazis were anything but amatures. In any event, the huge amounts of carbon dioxide would smother you long before any signs of carbon monoxide poisoning show up. Also, this author is not exactly objective. Can anyone find a quote from Time or USA Today or somesuch?

“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island

#20

Oh boy, the Internet is great, but to find an exact anything from 9 years ago… dead links galore.

The quote in which Pat Buchanan denies people could be asphyxiated by diesel fumes comes from “The Heresies of Pat Buchanan,” New Republic, Oct. 22, 1990, pp.26-27. I also found an essay on the subject at http://world.std.com/~rjg/buchanan.html that has more quotes from Buchanan, including that he thinks that Holocaust Survivor Syndrome is actually “group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.” The cites this site provides are:

  1. Denying the Holocaust / Deborah Lipstadt, ISBN 0-452-27274-2; pp. 5-6; p.238, Note 13. Jacob Weisberg, “The Heresies of Pat Buchanan,” New Republic, Oct. 22, 1990, pp.26-27.

  2. Buchanan, Patrick, “‘Ivan the Terrible’ - More Doubts,” New York Post, Saturday, March 17, 1990.

  3. Denying the Holocaust / Deborah Lipstadt, ISBN 0-452-27274-2; p.6; p.238, Note 14. Ibid., p.26"

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy