For the past two weeks, Pat Buchanan has appeared on every talk show in the country, from CNN to Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and on every show I have heard every Republican ask Pat to remain in the GOP fold.
After receiving such minimal support in polls and the Iowa straw poll, if Buchanan is so intent on "taking his basketball and going home," then I gladly wave goodbye. Why? Because Pat has proved that he is not a Republican anymore.
His policies are vehemently isolationist and thus anti-Reagan. The former president viewed the U.S. as a world leader and was a strong supporter of free trade abroad. Buchanan, on the other hand, thinks the U.S. should close up like a turtle; end free trade and stop all immigration, legal or otherwise.
More and more lately, he's coming across as blatantly racist, and not just for his strong anti-immigration message. On one campaign stump, he advocated harsher treatment of China by saying the Chinese have sold their "last pair of chopsticks in any mall in the United States of America." Or demanding that the Ivy League -- now about 50 percent Jewish and Asian -- "look more like America" by reserving 75 percent of its slots for "non-Jewish whites."
Coming across both wrongly isolationist and anti-Semetic, Buchanan, in his new book "A Republic, Not an Empire", says that he believes the United States had no compelling interest in fighting in World War II, but should have stopped at supporting its allies.
Buchanan argues that Britain and France made a historic mistake when they went to war over Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. Instead, they should have allowed the German dictator to swallow Poland and then attack the Soviet Union and its brutal leader Josef Stalin.
"By redirecting Hitler's first blow upon themselves, Britain and France bought Stalin two extra years to prepare for Hitler's attack -- and thus saved the Soviet Union for Communism," Buchanan wrote.
He also argued the United States had no stake in the war, even after Germany had conquered France.
His comments bring back memories of past opposition to the deportation from the United States of former Nazis, his
description of Holocaust survivors' memories as "group fantasies of martyrdom" and his complaint, repeated recently, that U.S. foreign policy has been dominated by Jews and the pro-Israel lobby.
"This man has a very strong animus against Jews, which amounts to anti-Semitism," said Walter Reich, a former director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington who is now at George Washington University.
"It has led him in one March 1990 column to advance the totally specious argument that carbon monoxide could not have been used to kill Jews in Treblinka where 850,000 were gassed. It would be a travesty if he represented a party running in the election," said Reich.
We don't need campaign finance reform; we need ego reform. The Republicans who are learning that the party is not as far right as they hoped are now crying foul, and instead of working within the party to help mold the GOP for the 21st Century, they are leaving. Pat Buchanan and Bob Smith, I tell you this: the vast majority of your supporters will not follow your exodus of the party. They are smarter than that.
And to the Republicans who keep sucking up to Buchanan, stop. It makes you look ridiculous to come across as a supporter of Buchanan's comments.
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