Buchanan Isn't 'Balance': On Big Issues, Pat Prefers Dems

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The Democrats are better at understanding the impact of globalization on working people in America. The wages that have been arrested and halted in their growth, while, you know the boys in investment banking are making 10 times the average income of an American. I think the Democrats understand the consequences of it more than the Republicans and, frankly, another disagreement I've got with Republicans is that they are compulsive interventionists. They seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from what happened in Iraq when they are talking about doing the same thing in Iran. -- Pat Buchanan, November 29, 2007

The next time you hear the MSM defending itself against charges of a lack of balance by pointing to Pat Buchanan's presence on its panels, remember his statement above. On globalization, Pat echoes the Seattle street protesters, seasoned with some John Edwards "Two Americas" rhetoric about Wall Street fat cats. On foreign policy, Pat sounds like someone auditioning for Secretary of Peace in Pres. Kucinich's cabinet.

Buchanan's statement came in the course of a conversation he had with Bill Steigerwald, Associate Editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. As telling as was Pat's answer is the question to which he was responding:

Q: Bush is going to be gone, so what person or what party can combine your approaches and your remedies into a policy or a platform?

So this was not some general policy pronouncement by Pat. It was his response to a specific "who do you want in power?" question. Note that Pat reserves all his compliments for Dems and all his criticism for Republicans.

In introducing the column, Steigerwald described Buchanan as "always-affable." Indeed, Pat is very much the happy warrior, and I agree with him on a number of issues. But while Buchanan's is an interesting voice, the MSM shouldn't be allowed to get away with faux-balance by passing Pat off as a partisan Republican. He's anything but.