Rachel Maddow Warns Pat Buchanan About Playing the Race Card

Rachel Maddow

There are some talk show debates that will live in talk show infamy. My opinion is that this heated debate between the liberal Rachel Maddow (host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show) and staunch neo-conservative Pat Buchanan on the qualifications of Sonya Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court Justice and the affirmative action programs that gave her the many opportunities that led her to this point, will live in talk show smackdown history (and it should).

Pat Buchanan (@patrickbuchanan) visited The Rachel Maddow Show after a week long campaign where he denounced fellow republicans for the softballing of Sonya Sotomayor at her confirmation hearings and for their refusal to call her a racist who discriminates against white men.

After this week, does Buchanan have egg on his face?

Clearly, Buchanan doesn’t want her to be confirmed. But his tirades on numerous talk shows this week where he tried to defend his position, only made things worse. He is experiencing backlash of epic proportions. This interview he does with Rachel Maddow (@maddow) (who is clearly disgusted with his views and comments on the subject) was the cherry on top of a backlash sundae.

The discussion begins with Maddow reading a quote from Buchanan’s column this week in which he pontificates on Sotomayors alleged life-long discrimination against white males:

“These are the folks… who pay the price of affirmative action when their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonya Sotomayors. What Republicans must do is expose Sotomayor… as a political activist whose career bespeaks a lifelong resolve to discriminate against white males… Even if Sotomayor is confirmed making the nation aware she is a militant supporter since college days of ethnic and gender preferences is an assignment worth pursuing.”

The above statement proves to be more than enough meat for Maddow to sink her teeth into (and she soon switches from sinking her teeth into the above statement to sinking them Buchanin’s rear-end before handing it back to him). It is in this interview that Buchanan made the explosive and politically damning statement that:

“This has been a country built basically by white folks.”

Maddow’s final words were echoed through out the political and news talk show world (and might as well had been a doomsday prophesy for republicans) when she ended her interview with Buchanan by telling him:

“For you to privilege race is to make sure what we tap politically is white people’s racial greivances, you’re playing with fire and you’re dating yourself. You’re living in the 1950’s.”

Why did she nail him so hard in this interview? Why was she so effective? Because she deftly underscored what the rest of us know at the core of our being: the only thing worse than being wrong is being irrelevant. Buchanan is deep-sea diving in the Ocean of Irrelevance (or as Maddow puts it: the 1950’s).

Uncle Pat: MSNBC’s Knowing Promotion of White Supremacy and Racial Hatred (seminal.firedoglake.com)
How Is MSNBC Employing Bigger Bigots Than Even Fox News? (queerty.com)
The Unvarnished Racism of Pat Buchanan (themoderatevoice.com)
Rachel Maddow Duels With Pat Buchanan On Affirmative Action (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
Time for Pat Buchanan to Go Away (crooksandliars.com)

Twitter tag: Pat Buchanan

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Carol Anne says:

July 19, 2009 at 11:44 am

Please, Rachel and Joan Walsh and all the others, no more calling him “Uncle Pat,” as though Buchanan is a crotchety but beloved relative. He’s a bigot.

Charlie Oliver says:

July 19, 2009 at 1:46 pm

I agree. I think that, after his meltdown this week, they’ll think twice before calling him “uncle pat”. In this interview, Rachel Meddow all but called him a “crazy old coot”.