[Buchanan had been doing a pretty good peacenik imitation recently, but he has really changed his tune. Max Sawicky wrote of this on his blog yesterday:]
STICK A FORK IN PAT
Caught Joe Scarborough last night. He did a segment on the progress in Iraq, then on conservative discord over the course of the war. ...
On the conservative crack-up, the guests were Andy and Pat Buchanan. They were both pretty good, each in their own way. Andy said problems need to be openly discussed, mistakes admitted. The campaign is salvageable. Plausible, if wrong.
Pat was much more amazing. After writing columns for months about the errancy of the invasion, and maintaining now that it was a mistake, Pat said Bush needs to straighten up and fly right: be honest about the cost of bringing off the occupation, and adding the hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of dollars necessary. He emphasized that a failure in Iraq would mean a meltdown of the Republicans, true enough, but this leads him to urge the Administration to double down. In other words, Bush's political survival is more important than a U.S. debacle in Iraq.
I've always said, as a populist, even as a right-wing populist, Buchanan has always been a complete phony. He is not a serious anti-war person. He was never a serious critic of trade, since he never had any constructive remedies. He is not a serious third party person, since he wrecked the only viable third party the U.S. has had since, what, the Socialist Party before WWI?
Pat is just another court jester, a placeholder to reflect some safe diversity in opinion.
Carl
_________________________________________________________________ Watch LIVE baseball games on your computer with MLB.TV, included with MSN Premium! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200439ave/direct/01/