By: DAVID RICE
Re: Buchanan

1997 San Francisco Examiner

An ex-pundit with a record of bigotry, malice and racism

TWO VIEWS OF PAT BUCHANAN

DEROY MURDOCK

IS PAT BUCHANAN Louis Farrakhan in white face?

The former political commentator faces mounting criticism
over his intemper ate racial remarks and his knack for
luring the support of professional bigots.

While Buchanan dismisses many of his early comments as
"golden oldies," wider knowledge of his past and present
statements and associations could tarnish his buoyant
candidacy.

Fresh scrutiny began Feb. 15 when Larry Pratt, chief of
Gun Owners of America and Buchanan's campaign co-chairman,
admitted that he spoke at a 1992 rally arranged by the
head of Christian Identity, a group that calls non-whites
"mud people" and Jews "children of Satan," according to
the Anti-Defamation League.

Pratt also attended an event where a white supremacist
performed the Nazi salute and said: "I am a bigot. I am a
100 percent bigot." While Pratt took a leave of absence to
defend his reputation, Buchanan declared, "I am going to
stand by him."

"Prattgate" yielded the next day to the fresh news that
Susan Lamb, his acting Duval County (Florida) chairwoman,
is a local leader of the National Association for the
Advancement of White People, a group launched by David
Duke. Buchanan himself once said of the one-time Klansman:
"David Duke is busy stealing from me. I have a mind to go
down there and sue that dude for intellectual property
theft."

No fewer than a half dozen Buchanan operatives have been
tied to white supremacist and militia groups.

Why do hatemongers keep popping up among the Buchanan
Brigades?

The former political pundit's us-versus-them rhetoric
appears to act as code for those who would interpret his
words with malice towards all and charity for none.

Consider, for instance, his promises to wall off the
nation from Mexican immigrants. Despite wanting to toss
concrete between America and its southern neighbor,
Buchanan wrote glowingly in the April 14, 1990, New York
Post about adopting most of Canada: "There is nothing
wrong with Americans dreaming of a republic which, by the
year 2000, encompasses the Maritime and western provinces
of Canada, the Yukon and Northwest Territories all the way
to the Pole, and contains Greenland, purchased from
Denmark, giving the United States a land mass rivaling
that of the USSR."

The Oct. 22, 1990, issue of "From the Right," a
newsletter, offers this compassionate Buchananism: "With
80,000 dead of AIDS, 3,000 more buried each month, our
promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on
Satanism and suicide."

In a notorious column just before the 1991 Persian Gulf
War, Buchanan blamed Israel and its "amen corner" in the
U.S. for promoting the anti-Hussein effort. The chief
culprits were strategists Henry Kissinger and Richard
Perle and journalists Abe Rosenthal and Charles
Krauthammer. The conflict's victims, Buchanan predicted,
would have names like "McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and
Leroy Brown."

At a 1985 White House meeting where prominent Jews opposed
President Reagan's plans to visit the Nazi cemetery in
Bitburg, West Germany, Buchanan repeatedly scribbled in
his notebook: "Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews."

In a 1977 column, Buchanan praised Adolf Hitler as "an
individual of great courage" who enjoyed "an intuitive
sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness
masquerading as morality that was in the heart of the
statesmen who stood in his path."

The Associated Press recently unearthed a six-page,
single-spaced memo on Dec. 15, 1971, to Nixon's White
House chief of staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, and John
Mitchell, then the attorney general. Then a presidential
aide, Buchanan explained how to prevent California's
liberal Republican congressman, Pete McCloskey, from
running against Nixon in the 1972 New Hampshire primary
and "destroy his (McCloskey's) credibility as a legitimate
Republican." Buchanan suggested that "perhaps the Gay
Liberation and / or Black Panthers and / or Students for a
Democratic Society at Dartmouth could be prevailed upon to
contribute a grand or so to the McCloskey campaign."

At that point, Buchanan proposed, the White House would
leak the news to the New Hampshire media, thus embarassing
McCloskey. Buchanan also envisioned an "intelligence
operation" to seek links between McCloskey and "peace
money, New York Jewish money, and California fat cat
money."

Buchanan's behavior in New Hampshire 25 years later was no
more encouraging. On primary night, the Wall Street
Journal reported, foreign journalists were barred from
Buchanan's celebration.

Pat Buchanan's friends in the media and politics split
hairs like atoms in trying to separate him from his words.
They say he's neither racist nor extremist; he merely uses
racist and extremist rhetoric.

That distinction is as useful as excusing a masked gunman
as just a man in a mask with a gun.

In coming weeks, primary voters will decide if Pat
Buchanan, a well-dressed bigot armed with a seductive
message, manages to kidnap the Republican party.

Political conservative Deroy Murdock is president of Loud
& Clear Communications, a marketing and media consultancy.


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