Pat Buchanan unleashed his inner Tea Partier yesterday on Hardball, telling Chris Matthews that he would campaign for Tea Party challenger J.D. Hayworth over John McCain in their Arizona primary race. Hayworth, you may recall, recently voiced support for the Birthers on the same show:
MATTHEWS: Where are you on McCain versus Hayworth?
BUCHANAN: If I‘m out in Arizona, I would vote for J.D. Hayworth, who is a friend of mine and a conservative. And if he lost, I would vote for John McCain.
MATTHEWS: OK, we know where you stand.
Joan Walsh took him to task for it:
WALSH: We absolutely know where you stand. He‘s a birther. He‘s an extremist. Thank you, Pat.
The "Birther" matter is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hayworth. Back in 2006, en route to losing his congressional seat, Hayworth tried to revive Henry Ford's program of "Americanism," which you may recall was actually a code word for anti-Semitic eliminationism; it was also a favorite program promoted avidly by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
Hayworth lost that race, in no small part because of voters were repelled by his lame denials about the "Americanization" program.
Of course, none of this would bother the author of State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, would it?
But because he's still our avuncular Uncle Pitchfork, he of course resorted to the standard retort of conservatives when confronted with the realities of the extremists in their midst:
BUCHANAN: This is why you lose—do you know why you lose these people? Because you show contempt for them. You call them birthers. You call them names. I‘m talking about the people, the Tea Party people. All they want, Joan, is respect. And you liberals never give it to them. You call them all names. No wonder they go over to the Republican party.
Walsh then took Buchanan apart:
