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2008 Campaign
Family Security Matters does not stand behind or endorse any candidate for president (or any other public office). However, as the President is also Commander-in-Chief and is responsible for setting national security policy, we will be publishing a variety of articles on both the Republican and Democrat candidates for President during this election year. As always, the opinions of our Contributing Editors are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Family Security Matters.
- IN THIS SECTION
July 23, 2008
Exclusive: Pat Buchanan Targets Democrats from the Left, Making Pelosi, Obama Sound Reasonable
“Iran threat: We will burn American navy and set Israel alight if attacked, says Khamenei aide” - Guardian newspaper headline, July 9, 2008.
“There is no imminent crisis to justify war on Iran. Yet, what is Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic House doing? Some 220 members, a majority, have endorsed House Concurrent Resolution 362. This virtual war resolution ‘demands’ that President Bush initiate a blockade to halt all Iranian imports of refined petroleum products and impose ‘stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran.’ A Democratic House that came to power denouncing the rush to war on Iraq is about to vote to demand that Bush commit an act of war against Iran.”
…“Israel and its Fifth Column in [Washington] seek to stampede us into war with Iran. Bush should rebuff them.” - Patrick J. Buchanan column, Vdare.com, July 10, 2008.
“There is a line between ‘moving toward the center’ and stabbing your allies
in the back out of fear of being criticized…And of late, [Barack Obama] has been doing a lot of stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician.”- Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, Washington Times, July 12, 2008.
Pat Buchanan, a prominent conservative columnist, is very angry at the liberal Democrats who run the House of Representatives – not because of their tax-and-spend policies or their failed efforts to defund the war effort against Jihadist terror Iraq. No, he’s practically foaming at the mouth because liberal Democrats in the House are joining with conservative Republicans in that chamber to support economic sanctions against Iran. Why? It is the West’s last chance to try to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons programs short of war. What reasonable American could oppose using economic power to keep such weapons out of the hands of such a rogue state headed by a man who denies the Holocaust and routinely calls for Israel’s destruction?
But for Pat Buchanan, the problem isn’t the gangsters in Tehran – it’s American Jews who use their First Amendment rights to peacefully petition their own government. Buchanan is treating us to the 2lst century version of the “Blood Libel”: a centuries-old canard about Jews kidnapping non-Jewish children, killing them and draining their blood to make matzoh. Incidentally, he did the same thing back in 1990 in the run-up to the first Gulf war after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, asserting that Israel’s “Amen Corner” was attempting to snooker Americans into war.
Compared to old Pat railing against the Jewish “Fifth Column” in the United States, Leftists like Moulitsas sound almost reasonable in explaining their grievances against Obama. The Illinois Democrat has a growing credibility problem with the far-left fringe of the American electorate. Right now, they are furious over his move to the center (at least rhetorically) on one issue after another: On Iraq, Obama has tried to back away from the strident antiwar rhetoric he employed early in the Democrat primary campaign where he suggested that he would withdraw troops from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground. Today, Obama bows to reality by suggesting that a withdrawal might be delayed if military conditions warrant. His willingness to vote for legislation reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) with retroactive liability protection for telecommunications firms is another problem, and these people are furious with Obama over a June 4th speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) declaring that his goal is to “eliminate” the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
One can reasonably argue that these are empty gestures from Obama - in Iraq, the political battle in Congress is over - Obama and the political Left lost and the “surge” worked (spectacularly.) On FISA, the bill was going to pass overwhelmingly with or without Obama’s vote, so he decided that would be a good time to act like a “moderate.” And on Iran, Obama has left himself plenty of wiggle room to delay and avoid doing anything if he is elected president. But even empty gestures infuriate his Left-wing political base.
Politically speaking, Obama and the Democrats would probably benefit from distancing themselves from hard Left. The historical reality is unavoidable: Since these people ascended to a position of power during the 1968 Democratic primaries that ended LBJ’s presidency, the Democrat Party has lost seven of 10 presidential elections. But when push comes to shove, it is unrealistic to think that Obama will completely abandon these people. For one thing, he cannot take their votes for granted. Third-party fringe candidates like Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney are to the Left of him on war-related issues. Even if they win only one or two percent of the vote between them, they could take just enough votes away to tip a close election to John McCain (Nader’s success in taking votes away from Al Gore in 2000 is the Democrats’ nightmare scenario).
That brings us back to Pat Buchanan: While liberal politicians like Obama race for the political center, Buchanan (who still retains a large following among conservatives for his positions on issues like illegal immigration) is attacking liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives from the Left - depicting them as part of a conspiracy to plunge America into a war to benefit Israel. When I came to Washington in the mid-1980s, I admired Buchanan for his hard-hitting style of writing, and his support for a strong, assertive America in the battle against Soviet communism. Even today, he makes perfect sense when discussing domestic American political trends on television. But as communism rotted away, Pat Buchanan morphed into a modern-day version of 1930s isolationists - people like Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee - when it came to America’s role in the world. The difference between Pat and the American Firsters is that the latter had the good sense to go out of business after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. But today, almost seven years after international Jihad targeted the United States on September 11th, he is still at it - impugning the patriotism of honorable Americans who have the temerity to disagree with him. But every time Pat Buchanan and the Left-wing bloggers go after Pelosi or Obama for being too tough on America’s enemies, they make these Democrats seem relatively reasonable.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Joel Himelfarb is an editorial writer for The Washington Times. The views expressed here are his own. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
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