Word: buchananism
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Columnists walk a tightrope. To be either too bland or too savage usually erodes their following and, ultimately, their livelihood. One pundit who never errs on the side of niceness is Patrick Buchanan, a former aide to Presidents Nixon and Reagan. He earns a reported $500,000 a year from a column in 180 newspapers, lectures and daily TV exposure on CNN's Crossfire and the syndicated McLaughlin Group and Capital Gang. Blending unyielding right-wing views with incendiary rhetoric, he stirs deep passions. Last week Buchanan was teetering on the tightrope. His latest outbursts had even longtime allies accusing...
What set them off most was a typical Buchanan crack, which wrapped a core of fact in a coating of hyperbole. On McLaughlin, he decried the prospect of military action against Iraq: "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." To underscore the point, he wrote that war would result in Americans "humping up that bloody road to Baghdad . . . kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown." In sharp contrast to that litany of normally Christian surnames...
This proved too much for A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times, the paper's former top editor and now a conservative columnist. Rosenthal wrote that Buchanan's words amounted to "blood libel," an implication that Jews have "alien loyalties for which they will sacrifice the lives of Americans." Rosenthal later insisted he had not overstated the case: "Buchanan can dish it out; let him take it a little." Others hastened to join in. The conservative Post, Buchanan's publisher in New York City, editorialized that "when it comes to Jews as a group . . . Buchanan betrays an all-too- familiar...
...event, right-wingers with reservations about the U.S. foray into the gulf find themselves siding with some old intellectual foes. Liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. observes with some bemusement that his views about the American involvement in the region are pretty much the same as those Buchanan has espoused. "Well," says Schlesinger, a harsh critic of the Vietnam War, "people learn." As the U.S. gropes for a new definition of its interests in a topsy-turvy world, such startling shifts of opinion may become commonplace...
Bush's political right wing, normally united in militancy, is split between those who, like New York Times columnist William Safire, would smash Saddam Hussein now, and those who, like columnist Patrick Buchanan, are dead set against "an American-initiated war." So far, Bush is more amused than troubled by that debate. A greater concern is the rising specter of a recession. There is not much disagreement on that among Bush partisans. Richard Lesher, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, views the White House from his office window and allows that "recession is all around us already." There...