Neocon Frontpage/Horowitz blast Pat Buchanan and paleos

[DWolper]

If you are interested in the fight between the neocons and the paleo-conservatives (which many consider the more "traditional" brand of conservatism) there is a must-read at FrontPage. It is an attempt to totally discredit the paleos like Francis, Pat Buchanan, etc. by tying them to Michael Moore, A.N.S.W.E.R, and other groups. Lou Dobbs of CNN recently accepted the description of himself as "paleo conservative" without disapproval.

As we all know, Pat Buchanan has relentlessly opposed the neocons hijacking of the Republican Party, beginning with the stealth/covert foreign policy run out of the office of Bush Sr. when he was Reagan's veep. All the illegal crap done "in the basement" by Bush Sr. was the true beginnings of their takeover of the Republican Party. Make no mistake about that.

This article is a fascinating glimpse at just how mean this fight is becoming. If you're interested at all in the internal Republican fight, you MUST read this. Eye-opening reading at the neocon e-rag FrontPage Magazine run by rabid neocon David Horowitz.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14542

I am Jewish and proud. But, I am totally opposed to anything neocon and feel that Israel must be held to account in many areas. I have met Pat Buchanan on many occasions and disagree with him on many, many things, however, Buchanan was totally misunderstood in 2000 when writing about WWII and feel he is no way anti-semitic. It's an old trick to call any opposition to Israel as "anti-semitic."

I feel that as Democrats, we must understand this battle inside the Republican party.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14542

[iconoclastic cat]

1. How do you know Buchanan?

BTW, welcome to DU! I hope you enjoy it here.
:hi:

[DWolper]

3. Pat Buchanan

I first met Pat years ago when he worked for Richard Nixon and my company produced a series of "issue ads" for RMN. I am still asked about those by some, but still defend them. While President Nixon proved to be a failure as president on many levels, he was advancing some very liberal issues regarding the environment and the need for national health insurance. I helped to advance those issues. many were successful, the NHI proposals were sincere fights by Nixon, but the far right in the party blocked everything and made it impossible.

Later, I renewed my acquaintance with him in the late eighties and have stayed in touch since. He is a man with which I disagree on many issues, but he is one to listen, engage in intelligent political banter, yet is able (as am I) to leave the disagreements on the table. That is unusual in politics today quite frankly. He honestly believes that the bunch in the WH today are neither liberal or conservative, but are neoconservative ideologues devoted to certain foreign policy objectives and the corporate class in America. I know many here don't like Pat, but I can't help but like Pat as he and Shelly are very personable and good people.

[yardwork]

8. You're right about Nixon having been progressive in some areas

especially in health care.

I too disagree with Pat Buchanan in many areas but I respect him as a decent person who is honest in his opinions, unlike the criminals who have highjacked the Republican Party.

Isn't David Horowitz the person who keeps buying full-page ads in college newspapers claiming that that Holocaust did not occur and is simply "a liberal invention?" He's a dreadful person.

[DWolper]

12. Horowitz/Irving - Nixon/Health care

The man with the historical revisionism concerning the Holocaust is actually David Irving.

Nixon was most definitely progressive on health care. Few remember the adamant opposition from the AMA when Nixon unveiled his, "Health Care for ALL" program. He pushed it hard for a few weeks, but John Ashbrook - a Republican from Ohio (I think?) built opposition so fast and had everybody believing they would never see their family doctor again after the "government assigns you one with Nixon's scheme." In fact, Ashbrook made a longshot bid for president to defeat Nixon in 1972 with the slogan "No Left Turn."

[Calico Jack Rackham]

2. Whoreowitz is

a babbling Neocon Douchebag and a Likud party shill. I don't agree with ole Pat on things; however, I do respect the stand he takes, especially with the Bushies.

[The Crazy Canadian]

4. Let the Right eat themselves up.

Let the peleocons and libertarians do the fighting while we focus on building a strong progressive movement. But we should definitely follow this fight on the Right and help weaken the Right as much as we can.

The neocons are on the ropes (because of the failure in Iraq) and hopefully when Bush loses, the neocons will be down and out.
They will still have some influence, with such groups like the Christian Zionists/social conservatives within the Right.

[Canuckistanian]

5. I hate this Anti-neocon=Anti-Israeli=Anti-Semite shit

Wasn't it Horowitz who promotes this notion?

[DWolper]

6. Yes!

That's why the article on Frontpage (Horowitz) is so blistering. It is an attempt to smear the paleo tendency and define "conservative" in a way the neocons would like. Fascinating really. The article is rubbish but shows how ugly the fight is becoming inside their party. To David Horowitz, anything anti-Israel is anti-semitic. I despise that thinking.

[KoKo]

13. I hate to say this, but observing that much of dialog today is between

what I call "Responsible Jews: Alterman, Marshall, Hersh and the many other "Bloggers" and columnists who are so present in our media. Then I see those like "Safire, Kurtz, Goldberg, Judith Miller, David Horowitz, and the many leading Editors of our great News Journals and "Op Ed's" and again more "Bloggers" and writers who are on the conservative Sharon/Likud side of things. So many Jews...who write so well, many times to each other in some sort of "hidden war of ideals and ideology" while those of us "non-Jews" are left out in the cold. :shrug:

We have a war of ideals between those who understood what the "Holocaust" was about, and those who seem to want to perpetuate what happened in pre-Nazi and full-Nazi Germany.

It's very hard to then throw Pat Buchanan and other "isolationists" into this without trying to find a way to deal with the Newo-Cons/PNAC'ers and those great Liberal Jews of the early 20th Century who were not party of Nazi Germany but who led the movement for "liberalism" in America from the Labor Movement to the Civil Rights Movement, picking up the new immigrants along the way.

What has happened to us?

[Cats Against Frist]

7. You're damn right, it's interesting

I feel an allegiance with Pat Buchanan in the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," sort of way (giving credence to Horowitz's "triangulation" assertion), but I still regard the paleos as pretty whacked out, and while they are protectivist in trade and defense, they still have a little too much "Jaysus" in them, for my taste.

However, the attack on the paleocons and libertarians is to drive out possible dissenters for when the "GOP Civil Church of Mammon and the Fake Jesus," made up of corpo-fascists, neoconservatives and Christian Reconstructionists, take hold with their fascist narrative.

See, the GOP for all their talk, is at least, if not more, into "big government" and "social engineering" as the left. If this were about being "left alone," forty percent of the GOP electorate would not be pushing to establish the U.S. as a Christian Nation, fuck with the Constitution and submit our laws to Scripture.

Everytime anyone talks about "midwestern values," that's social engineering. Abstinence programs are social engineering. Faith-based social service is social engineering. Keeping people from burning the flag is big government. Giving corporations human status, corporate bailouts, subsidy and welfare are big government. The drug war and drug prosecution is big government. The FBI, the CIA, the Defense Department are all "big federal government" -- or, at least they were when Clinton was president.

So the libertarians and paleocons are enemies of the dominant strain of the GOP, which is actually extremist. Even MODERATES that share their views, who aren't quite wild-eyed or sentimental enough about "giving abortion doctors the death penalty" are their enemies.

As they must ideologically wipe out the left's claim to governance, they must also wipe out the detractors within their own party.

Remember, in the narrative, there is NO room for dissent.

[AlCzervik]

9. There is a war going on in the

far rightwing of the gop, it has been bubbeling up for the past couple of years now. Horowitz and Buchanan hate each other, Frank Gaffney and Grover "date rape" norquist hate eachother and i think Novak and Safire hate everyone and in turn they are hated as well.

I never thought i'd ever side with Pat Buchanan on anything but his view on the war long before it started was dead on and now i try to read his column in american conservative when ever it comes out.

[bobbieinok]

10. Pat was on the 'left' in his vehement anti-NAFTA, pro-US workers

work

[AlCzervik]

11. Thats true, i forgot that one

[DavidFL]

14. Textbook neocon propaganda.

Aren't Front Page readers insulted that this publication thinks they're too ignorant to know that there are HUGE differences between the political philosophies of Buchanan and Nader, but sometimes some of their issues, like foreign policy, will overlap? Someone should inform Gancarski and Front Pace that factions within the political spectrum are not hermetically sealed from one another.


I find it hilarious, though, how when we on the Left mention the PNAC and the neocon cabal which has hijacked this government, we're called "conspiracy theorists." But to read this article, Anthony Gancarski makes it sound like the entire Left and traditional Right are nothing but a vast anti-Jewish, anti-Israel conspiracy. Projection is so typical of neocons.

[DWolper]

15. Very true, David

"But to read this article, Anthony Gancarski makes it sound like the entire Left and traditional Right are nothing but a vast anti-Jewish, anti-Israel conspiracy."

Indeed. In fact, as opposed to throwing the baby out with the bath water, this gent is filling the tub with everybody with whom he and his neocon friends might disagree.

[Sugarbleus]

16. I saw D. Horowitz on C-span several days ago. I nearly

threw my TV out the freaking window...I was sooooooooooo enraged with that puke.

OMG. Dems called in after he was off the set to BLAST the host because she let this whack job just rant and rant and tear down the dems in general without ever interjecting any sound questioning/rebuttal.

This SOB was cracking his knuckles, squirming in his seat, barely able to breath, kept wiping his nose---like a junkie ready for his next dose. It was outrageous. He was so blatant and rabid, I couldn't believe that C-span would put such a lunatic on the program. Doing so was, in terms of merit, akin to putting Charles Manson on..fercrissakes!!

:wtf: :grr:---> to Whorowitz

[nightperson]

17. It's a memorable, unintentionally helpful (to us) article,

and while it's not news to me, I hope this gets wide exposure. Perfect for educating "the young and the freepish". On foreign policy, some of the paleos and libertarians are like Dean on steroids and biker speed.

Lew Rockwell admitted, in tones strikingly reminiscent of the contemporary Left, “I have this in common with NPR, Michael Moore, the Black Caucus: a burning desire to see George Bush's fingers pried loose from the levers of power...

Clearly, Rockwell sees 2004 as an opportunity to settle scores and to build new coalitions. He has even counseled John Kerry to consider “triangulation” between the Democratic platform and Rockwell’s brand of libertarianism. Because of the moderating influence of the two-party system, extremists of both the Left and Right often find that they have much in common. So it is that Alexander Cockburn, of CounterPunch, and Antiwar.Com’s Justin Raimondo coexist with easy conviviality at antiwar events and link to one other’s work.

Perhaps one has embodied the overlap of Old Right and far-Left as much as Pat Buchanan. Like the Left, Buchanan opposed both Iraqi wars, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and anything shy of a pro-Arab foreign policy. During the primaries, Scott McConnell led The American Conservative’s somewhat implausible support for Howard Dean. He noted that one the New Hampshire organizers for Pat Buchanan in 1996 liked Dean in 2004. Said the crossover voter, “He reminds me of Pat.”

Another hardline hawk for Horowitz to harangue:

"The American political and social landscape is littered with the battered individuals who dared to criticize Israel ... Surely there can be no other historical example of a faraway, theocracy-in-all-but-name of only about six million people that ultimately controls the extent and even the occurrence of an important portion of political discourse and national security debate in a country of 270-plus million people that prides itself on religious toleration, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech ... Washington yearly pumps more than three billion taxpayer dollars into a nation that defiantly proclaims itself 'the Jewish State' and a democracy -- claims hard to reconcile with its treatment of Muslims in Israel, its limitations on political choice for those in the occupied territories, and the eternal exile it has enforced on those camped in the refugee diaspora across the Levant."

[DWolper]

18. very good

I'm glad you included that piece of the article. I agree that a lot of people would be surprised by certain alliances. As a matter of fact, I read Justin Raimondo quite often. Ever since I learned this Internet thing there's just so much to keep up with.