Pat Buchanan: This Has Been A Country Built Basically... By White Folks!

The pros and cons of affirmative action are well debated here by both Maddow and Buchanan. Buchanan makes the point that white people built the United States, in response to Maddow pointing out that 108 of the US's 110 Supreme Justices were white.

Buchanan has a long list of white people who he feels have been discriminated against by affirmative action, ignoring the fact that other races were discriminated against previously as the figures themselves attest.

And the truth is that Sotomayer has more judging experience - according to Rachel, and I note that Pat does not dispute this - than any other candidate in the last seventy years, and that she was originally appointed by George Bush senior.

It's also interesting that Pat won't discuss the grades which she got at Princeton compared with the grades which he got at Georgetown, I can only suppose because her grades were better than his, which is why he wants to talk about her scores at school rather than at Princeton.

And Pat pushes his luck when he positions himself as the defender of white working class Americans. No party cares less about the rights of working class Americans than the Republican party which Buchanan always defends. At which point I can only conclude that Pat's defence is not a defence of working class Americans, but of white working class Americans.

Pat really is playing the race card here, stirring up white feelings of disenfranchisement, whilst ignoring the greater acts of disenfranchisement that affirmative action is attempting to correct.

UPDATE:



Here's how Rachel earlier discussed the larger Republican game here.

Tags: Pat Buchanan, Rachel Maddow, affirmative action