In my diary last weekend, "Racist Throw-Back Pat "Cry-Baby" Buchanan Is A National Disgrace", I started off asking in big bold letters: "So why does Rachel Maddow invite him onto her show? And why is she so uncharacteristically weak?" I was not pleased with Maddow's performance at all.
This week, however, she made up for it rather well, as HouseofProgress noted in a QuickHit--though there were others that didn't think so, most notably Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler. (Here and here.) On the flip I'll explain why he's wrong--and why there's another MSNBC segment this week that really did miss the mark: David Shuster on Countdown refusing to hear what Charlie Pierce was telling him about the GOP, the Birthers, the media, and the lessons of the Clinton-Gore years. Here's the clip of Maddow's segment from Monday:
So why does Rachel Maddow invite him onto her show?
And why is she so uncharacteristically weak?
(1) I understand Rachel's characteristic MO: She's courteous to a fault. But why invite racist scumbag Pat Buchanan onto her show in the first place? And if--for some unfathomable reason--you must have him on, then why not be loaded for bear? Rachel had one main counter-argument up her sleeve, and that was it. Up against the overflowing cauldron of Buchanan's seething racial hatred, it was simply inadequate, and her politeness came across as tacitly conveying acceptance of his bigotry.
As sTiVo pointed out in comments to a quick hit yesterday, there were several huge items Rachel just let slip past: Buchanan's claim that everyone knows Sotomayor is subpar (news to Princeton, I'm sure), his pointing out that Sotomayor has referred to herself as an affirmative action baby, as if that's something to be ashamed of, Buchanan's absurd claims that (a) "white people built this country" (no slaves involved! no chocolate mess!), and (b) that explains why so many white men on the Supreme Court, etc. But above all, I agree with the conclusion:
The goal here has to be to force them to just shut up with this kind of crap for fear of embarrassment. Rachel was not ready with the kind of response that had a chance to do that.
What she finally settled on was a weak point of calling Buchanan a "fifties throwback". This may resonate with Maddow's audience, but it's not going to convince anyone who doesn't agree with her.
We can't keep talking to just ourselves.
Failing to do that actually enhanced Buchanan's standing, as if it actually needed any more mainstream puffery.
Back-to-back programs on Hardball last week provided a strikingly clear demonstration of just why Chris Matthews is a C-student, and how C-student mentality dominates our political discourse at a time when we simply can't afford such mediocrity any more.
First, on Monday, May 18, there was a segment discussing the GQ story on Rumsfeld's use of Bible quotes in top-secret briefings. During the segment, Pat Buchanan said:
BUCHANAN: This is a cover memo on an intelligence memo to the president of the United States. Have you ever read the Second Inaugural of Abraham Lincoln, talking about-if we have one drop of blood drawn by the lash has to be drawn by the sword, then God is a rightful judge-
And a little later, Matthews responded:
MATTHEWS: He's encouraging a war. Let me ask you this, there's one thing about Lincoln; he did give the best speech ever given in American history in his Second Inaugural. He tried to explain to the American people that just saw 600,000 people killed in a Civil War, brother against brother, that somehow this was expiation for slavery. He tried to find in the horror of the war some understanding, human understanding of the war through our background and our belief in the Bible.
He didn't try to sell the war. He tried to give some sense to it.
That's different.
That's a "B" answer.
The next day, Tuesday, May 19, there was a segment discussing global warming, in which Dana Rohrabacher tossed out a slew of long-discredited "scientific" arguments against global warming, and Matthews hadn't the foggiest idea what was wrong with them. Then, without first establishing what a load of hokum Rohrabacher was peddling, Matthews came back with this:
MATTHEWS: Is there a cultural divide between the two parties that goes beyond this issue, where one party is more traditional in its values and it relies more on faith than on science? For example, we've had people on this program-I'm sure they're all over the country-who don't believe in evolution. They don't believe in biology the way it's taught. They don't accept the way that we...
That's a "D" answer, at best. More like an "F". Combine them, and you've got a grade of C, C-. And that's where America is stuck, in a time when we can ill afford such befuddlement. A more in-depth examination of this poor performance on the flip.
Author Pat Buchanan says President Bush should be impeached for failing to stop the invasion of illegal aliens across the U.S. border with Mexico.
"I think he's committed an impeachable offense in refusing to enforce the immigration laws and in failing to uphold the Constitution by defending the states against this invasion," Buchanan told radio talk-show host Curt Smith this weekend on National Public Radio stations in upstate New York.
"When you have 6 million people apprehended on the border and several million got in on your watch ? and you have the ability to stop it ? I think you're derelict in your duty," he said. "And if the president says 'I can't do it,' you need a new president who will do it."
"This is not Ellis Island," said Buchanan. "This is an invasion."
Theodore Roosevelt is one of my greatest political heroes. The "strenuous life" was T.R.'s definition of Americanism, a celebration of America's pioneer ethos, the virtues that had won the West and inspired our belief in ourselves as the New Jerusalem, bound by sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity. "We cannot sit huddled within our borders," he warned, "and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond."(...)
And for Roosevelt that common destiny surpassed material gain and self-interest. Our freedom and our industry must aspire to more than acquisition and luxury. We must live out the true meaning of freedom, and accept "that we have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither."
Some critics, in his day and ours, saw in Roosevelt's patriotism only flag-waving chauvinism, not all that dissimilar to Old World ancestral allegiances that incited one people to subjugate another and plunged whole continents into war. But they did not see the universality of the ideals that formed his creed.
The last major conservative split took place in the early 1990's, when Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot were able to exploit conservative dissatisfaction with Bush Sr. over trade, immigration, the first Iraq war, and multilateral cooperation abroad. A McCain nomination has the potential re-open this exact same rift. It is ultimately a split between neoconservative imperialism and paleoconservative American exceptionalism. While McCain is a strong believer in the inherent superiority of American civilization, he draws many of the same internationalist conclusions from that belief that we have seen from the Bushes: spread American influence through foreign wars, free trade, religious evangelizing, and immigration policies that are relatively open when compared to those favored by other conservatives. This draws the ire of paleocons like Buchanan who are mainly interested in preserving what they see as the exceptionalism of American cultural identity through closed borders, closed trade, and a general disdain for involvement overseas.
With McCain as the nominee, a conservative split of this nature is almost inevitable. Like Bush, Iraq and immigration are two of the few areas where he simply refuses to pander to certain sections of his base. What is less inevitable is that this split will blow up into a full-scale primary and third party challenge ala 1992. In fact, that appears extremely unlikely, given what appears to be a remarkable decline in the political influence of paleoconservatives.
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