Most of us political junkies have, both by design and by accident, chosen our television “news and commentary” sources from a very narrow ideological spectrum that we find comfortable. In my case, as an ideological liberal with centrist tendencies, I get most of my TV updates and opinion from MSNBC.
In the evening I get out my laptop and place it on my lap (imagine that!) and watch Hardball, Countdown, Rachel. (I can’t stand David Gregory’s flaccid attempts to be “fair” so I watch CNN’s Situation Room when Race for the White House is on.) After Rachel I switch for an hour of CNN’s 360.
While I’m “watching” these sources I am simultaneously going through my bookmarked internet sources: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Salon, Politico, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Time, MSNBC internet, CNN internet, and, given my political position, the Obama web site.
Now to a true leftist, that is a pretty commonplace and even boring lineup. But at least by watching those center to left leaning television networks and internet sites I will occasionally get some information from the “other side.” The trouble with that during a presidential election race is that most people interviewed are simply spewing out the party line. There is precious little “news” or, heaven forbid, “new opinion” to be had.
What I, and others who are center to left in their ideologies, need is someone who is a true conservative with the balls to take on the left and center positions even in their own lairs. Pat Buchanan, who I have often thought long ago needed to be put out to pasture, simply refuses to leave, hangs around to call them as he sees them. That irritates me no end.
Most of the time I think he is off his gourd, but every two or three days he hits one out of the park. This week, for example, he hit the nail on the head about the utility of the Sarah Palin pick to the McCain campaign. He says that without Palin this election would not be nearly as close as it is.
Palin appeals to the Republican base, the social and populist conservatives that McCain inherited, and who do not trust McCain. She does not guarantee that McCain will win, but she preserves the base for a new attempt in 2012. Since she represents just about everything that I loath, without Rachel’s old “Uncle Pat” there is no way I would ever have taken the time to even think about her “usefulness.”
And, one last example, when Joe Biden put his big foot in his mouth again about Obama being tested internationally, only the good old Neandertal, Pat Buchanan, called it the gaffe that it was and did not try to justify Biden’s words. Meanwhile most of the liberal commentators, including our own Joan Walsh, whose opinions I greatly respect, were saying Biden was making a generic point about ANY new president being “tested,” which is true in general. But it was NOT what Biden said. Even Obama was clearly miffed and felt, this morning, that he had to reinvent Joe's remarks after saying that "Joe is sometimes given to rhetorical flurishes."
Most of the time I can’t stand Buchanan. But - most of the time I need to hear Pat Buchanan. If for no other reason that he reminds me that there are still a lot of amoral people out there on the right that believe that, in politics, the end always justify the means.
Buchanan stands for just about everything I have rejected long ago. But he also represents a large part of the American electorate that sees a far different country, and its future, than I see.
Which is precisely why I need to listen to the Pat Buchanans of this world.
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