WALLACE: How hard do you think President Obama would be to defeat in 2012?

PALIN: It depends on a few things, say he played — I got this from Buchanan — say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decide to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel–which I would like him to do. That changes the dynamics of what we can assume will happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, Obama would not be elected.

WALLACE: You’re not suggesting that Obama would cynically play the war card?

PALIN: I’m not suggesting that, I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and secure our allies. I think people would shift their thinking a bit.

Watch it:

Palin appears to be fine-tuning her position on Iran. Late last year, Palin mistook Iraq for Iran when she suggested that the U.S. has to crack down on Iraq to prevent nuclear war in Iran. In 2008, Palin appeared to claim that the U.S. needs to “win” the non-existent war with Iran. During her interview with Wallace, Palin also confirmed that she would consider running for President in 2012 and that it would be “absurd” not to.

– Chuck Todd: “Rush Limbaugh I think lives in South Florida. … Very large Haitian community in South Florida. You would assume he’d have a little more compassion about all of this.”

– Joe Scarborough: “The insensitivity is stunning, the words are deplorable. … [It's] indefensible.”

– Pat Buchanan: “They’re deeply insensitive, no doubt about it. I think the President of the U.S. speaks for the country when he stands up there. … I think Rush’s comments were cynical.”

John Harwood then decided to falsely equate Limbaugh’s “mean-spiritedness” with criticism from those on the left. “It’s not just on the right, it’s on the left as well,” Harwood said. Scarborough enthusiastically agreed: “Hate from the left, hate from the right.” Watch it:

Yesterday on Twitter, Scarborough was complaining that the media were giving too much attention to televangelist Pat Robertson’s inflammatory remarks about Haiti. “MSM will now obsess over Pat Robertson’s ‘devil’ comment but will pay no attention to his organization’s remarkable relief work worldwide,” he wrote. After considerable criticism, he clarified that he wasn’t “defending” what Robertson said, but wanted his comments put into context of “his work on behalf of the world’s poor.”

I think we’d have a big shortage of workers out there and I think as we move through this decade, we’re going to see people retiring from different types of jobs…so who is going to help fill those positions?

You would probably see towns shutting down, communities shutting down. You’d see second and third industries being affected – restaurant industries, service sectors industries where immigrants tend to work and be found. It would also impact the current ability to put food on your table because if you don’t have a certain number of people out there doing jobs that others wouldn’t want to do, then how are we going to provide the sustenance we need for all our American families?

Watch it:

What Buchanan, Goode, and all the others advocating an immigration moratorium fail to note is that, because of the recession, both legal and undocumented immigration are at record lows. And while it’s true that many immigrants work side-by-side American workers, that doesn’t serve as credible evidence that there is a significant number of American workers who have pursued those jobs and lost a job opportunity to an immigrant. In fact, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), has found that “despite the controversy it generates, illegal immigration has no significant impact on the overall U.S. economy.” MPI has also pointed out that, as of November 2009, immigrants are facing higher unemployment rates than American-born workers due to the fact that they are more likely to work in sectors that rise and fall with the business cycle.

As Solis points out, immigration policies should also take into account the future needs of an aging population. University of Southern California professor Dowell Myers recently pointed out that “as baby boomers become seniors, immigrants can fill the roles vacated by boomers shifting modes within the economy.” If the U.S. cuts future immigration, it could be in for a rude awakening when the recession is finally over. In an event at the Center for American Progress yesterday, Solis and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said today that comprehensive immigration reform would do a better job of strengthening the U.S. economy by improving pay, benefits, and working condition for all workers, along with adding billions of new tax dollars to the nation’s coffers.

Unemployment probably isn’t Goode and Buchanan’s only concern. In 2006, Buchanan called for an immigration moratorium to preserve the dominance of the white race in America. “If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built,” wrote Buchanan. That same year, Goode also warned that “we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States.”

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

BUCHANAN: It is the most idiotic comparison I’ve ever seen. Barack Obama won 95 percent of Washington DC, he comes in with both houses Congress behind him, the media love him, the country loves him. Nixon came in with both houses of Congress against him, he probably got 8 percent of the vote in Washington DC, the media loathed him. … I don’t see any comparison between Obama and Nixon whatsoever. … [T]here’s no comparison. Barack Obama’s got enormous press support, he’s got problems with Fox News but for heaven’s sakes there is no comparison here.

Watch it:

“I also have to laugh,” liberal talk radio host Bill Press said during the segment. “When two Republicans want to hurt a Democrat, what do they do? They compare him to another Republican. It’s crazy.”

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Last night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow debated her colleague Pat Buchanan on the role of affirmative action in the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. When Maddow pointed out that 108 of 110 Supreme Court justices have been white, Buchanan responded, “White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks.”

In his first speech before the NAACP since taking office, President Obama told the audience that, while “the pain of discrimination is still felt,” there’s “never been less.” He also issued a challenge to African-Americans: “We’ve got to say to our children…you will face challenges [but]…that’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school.”

Senators “friendly to labor” have decided to drop card-check, the central provision of a bill that would have made it easier for workers to organize simply by signing cards saying they wanted a union. Several “moderate Democrats opposed the card-check provision as undemocratic.” Instead, “the revised bill would require shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections.”

The House Ways and Means Committee passed a health care reform package that includes a robust public option. The plan includes a surtax on the wealthy to pay for it. “We’re very, very proud of what we’ve done,” Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) said. The American Medical Association had endorsed the plan.

“The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a $2 million check in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay,” Politico reports. After FedEx turned down the offer, ACU signed on to a letter supporting UPS’ position on legislation that would have FedEx “negotiate union contracts for individual locations.”

The Senate voted yesterday to extend hate crimes legislation to include “people attacked because of their sexual orientation or gender.” The bill will also “make it easier for federal prosecutors to step in when state or local authorities are unable or unwilling to pursue hate crimes.” The House passed a similar bill in April.

A new study from the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and UC, San Francisco “found that more than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who enrolled in the veterans health system after 2001 received a diagnosis of a mental health problem, most often post-traumatic stress disorder or depression.” The number of vets with mental health problems “rose steadily the longer they were out of the service.”

Two suicide bombers attacked two luxury hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia early this morning, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 50. “There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks on Friday, but initial suspicion is likely to be directed at Jemaah Islamiyah, which the United States government has placed on its list of terrorist organizations.”

Iranian opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, will attend Friday prayer services today, making his first official appearance since last month’s disputed presidential election. “As word of Mr. Moussavi’s planned appearance spread, opposition supporters vowed to show up in large numbers to the vast prayer hall where Friday’s sermon and prayers will take place. There were reports that green prayer mats — the color of Islam and of Mr. Moussavi’s election campaign — were sold out across the city.” Check out Nico Pitney’s coverage of the Iranian uprising.

And finally: “We’re going to do that crack cocaine thing,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said to a bemused witness at yesterday’s Sotomayor confirmation hearing. The hearing room quickly cracked up. Sessions laughed along with the crowd, saying “I misspoke.” He then clarified to the witness, Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, that “we’re going to reduce the burden of penalties in some of the crack cocaine cases and make them fair.”

BUCHANAN: “Well, first, with regard to Levi, I think First Dude up there in Alaska, Todd Palin, ought to take Levi down to the creek and hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.“

Time’s Mark Halperin then quipped: “That’s a reality show, right there.” The macabre humor was dark enough that MSNBC felt the need to follow-up with a disclaimer from Mika Brzezinski: “Just to clarify Pat’s incredible statement about Levi: Morning Joe does not advocate any violence against Levi Johnston, nor anyone else related to the Palin story.” Watch it:

Johnston, the 19-year-old father of Palin’s grandson, said in an interview this morning on NBC’s Today Show that he probably wouldn’t vote for Palin if she ran for president. (HT: Media Matters)

Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

Turner’s posts also “referred to the murder of the mother and husband of Chicago-based federal Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow in February 2005,” saying, “Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed.” In the Justice Department statement, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald — who announced the charges — said, “We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period.”

Turner is already in trouble with the law. Earlier this month, he turned himself in to the Connecticut State Police on charges of “inciting violence” against three state officials. He urged his audience to “take up arms” because he was reportedly “angry over legislation that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches in Connecticut more control over their parish’s finances.” Turner’s next court appearance in this case is on July 14.

As the Nation has pointed out, Turner has ties to Fox News’ Sean Hannity. In fact, Hannity has “offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner’s occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants.” Hannity would also reportedly offer Turner “encouragement” to overcome his cocaine habit and “homosexual leanings.”

Turner’s arrest comes after two major tragedies put the spotlight on the dangers of right-wing extremism: the Holocaust Museum shooting by white supremacist James von Brunn and the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

One salient feature of the event was the banner hanging over the English-only advocates. The word conference was spelled “Conferenece.” View it here:

The panelists pressed on with their anti-bilingualism diatribe without noting the irony of the obvious misspelling on the banner:

PAT BUCHANAN: Judge Sotomayor is up there at school in New York, she gets a scholarship to Princeton, she’s graduated with all these big honors and awards they said she never won. What’s she doing there in the summer? They said her adviser told her to read children’s classics so she can learn English better. How do you graduate number one in Princeton if you’re in the summer and you’re reading Rumpelstiltskin and Snow White? [laughter] [...]

PETER BRIMELOW: I really do recommend the language issue because you know that polls better than immigration and affirmative action. Eighty-five percent of Americans say they would favor official language policy. The wonderful thing about this issue if you look at what’s going to actually happen here is you’re going to find that the Obama administration is going to gradually institute institutional bilingualism in the country. It’s going to be required to speak Spanish in key positions, the police force and so on. This is a direct attack on the American working class because they are not going to be bilingual.

ThinkProgress attended the event and obtained audio of the panel. Listen here:

Mocking Sotomayor’s struggle to learn English has become a habit for Buchanan. On CSPAN a few weeks ago, Buchanan tried to undermine Sotomayor’s qualifications by saying she had read Pinocchio as a part of her “college work.” Buchanan was referencing a New York Times article, which talked about how hard Sotomayor had to work to graduate at the top of her class from Princeton. The article stated that she “spent summers reading children’s classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and ‘re-teaching’ herself to write ‘proper English’ by reading elementary grammar books.” Sotomayor never read children’s books as part of her “college work” and the books consisted of classics such as “Huckleberry Finn” and “Pride and Prejudice” — not Snow White, as Buchanan contends.

Peter Brimelow, one of the panelists to the event, is the editor of Vdare.com. He has written extensively against immigration and has long advocated that the GOP must “appeal to its base: white Americans.” Brimelow has defended accusations that he writes and publishes white supremacist material by declaring his content to be merely “white nationalist.”

DATELINE: What is the best way to approach this? … President Obama though says that we don’t want to take sides too publicly because then the ruling regime there could use us as the straw man to beat back this public uprising. How do you read this?

ROHRABACHER: Well I think that Mr. Obama, if he continues to have these types of attitudes, we’re going to see things get very bad, very quickly. Already the North Koreans have challenged him and realized that he’s a cream puff, if that is what he is indeed going to be as a President.… [N]ow if the Mullahs in Iran are permitted to just roll over opposition something like Tienanmen square, we will have missed a great opportunity.

Later in the interview, Rohrabacher said that he had distributed a video to the people of Iran that declared “we’re with them, be courageous, don’t let this moment go by” and that Ronald Reagan “always knew that — at the very least — we should be vocally supportive of all those people who are oppressed.” Listen here:

Rohrabacher’s view of Obama’s actions on Iran is not shared by some of his Republican colleagues in Congress or even some conservative commentators. Indeed, as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) said on CBS’s Early Show yesterday, “I think for the moment our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation.” Likewise, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) told Politico that Obama should “absolutely not” be more forceful on Iran. Pat Buchanan wrote on the conservative TownHall.com that “[t]he Obama policy of extending an open hand to Iran is working and ought not be abandoned because of the grim events in Tehran.”

But perhaps the most compelling endorsement of the Obama administration’s reaction to the election crisis in Iran came from Morehead Kennedy, who was held hostage for 444 days by Iranian revolutions while serving as acting head of the U.S. Embassy’s economic section in Tehran in 1979. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Kennedy “praised Joe Biden’s reaction to the protesters Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, in which the vice president cast doubt on the election results but shied away from a more pronounced condemnation.” “It’s very counterproductive to interfere in someone else’s election. I think the best thing the U.S. can do is shut up,” he said.

Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review — all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.
This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries.

One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated “with the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

This is the newest in a series of racist comments made by Buchanan since Sotomayor’s nomination. He has told senators to oppose Sotomayor’s nomination and “stand up for the white working class.” He even went so far as to assert that, because of affirmative action, “what is happening now to white men right now is exactly what was done to black folks for years.”

– Claire Teitelman

Peter Brimelow, editor of VDARE.com, has written numerous tracts railing against immigration. He has said that the Republican party must “appeal to its base: white Americans,” and noted that John McCain “easily carried the white a.k.a. American vote.” Hitting back at critics of his website, he defended the site’s “white nationalist” writers:

We also publish on VDARE.COM a few writers…whom I would regard as “white nationalist,” in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites. … Get used to it. As immigration policy drives whites into a minority, this type of interest-group “white nationalism” will inexorably increase.

Other writers on the site are even more outspoken in their racism, particularly Steve Sailor:

[W]hat if there is disparate impact for a good reason that is unmentionable: that blacks, on average, aren’t as smart as whites? We are supposed to constantly act as if the racial gaps seen on the New Haven firefighters’ written test were surprising when they are exactly the same as those seen on, say, graduate and professional school exams. [LINK]

In other words, what Obama hasn’t figured out yet…is that Better Teachers means Whiter Teachers. [LINK]

It’s no surprise that Buchanan would invite such a hatemonger to his conference. Buchanan himself has appeared at least twice on a neo-Nazi radio show; one appearance was streamed live on Stormfront, one of the most prominent white supremacist online forums. More recently, Buchanan has led the far-right attack against Sonia Sotomayor and in supposed defense of white men, going to far as to claim that “what is happening now to white men right now is exactly what was done to black folks for years.”

As Media Matters’ Jamison Foser asked, what exactly would Pat Buchanan have to say or do to get himself fired from MSNBC?

STEELE: In the Midwest, you guys like to wear it a little bit to the right. In the South, you guys wear the brim straight ahead. Now the Northeast, I wear my hat backwards, you know, ’cause that’s how we roll in the Northeast.

At the College Republican annual conference this past weekend, Steele again deployed the same exercise to teach students about embracing Republicans, regardless of “how they wear their hat.” Steele asked four College Republicans to stand up and simulate wearing a hat “that very boldly says GOP.” After lecturing on how each imaginary hat would could be worn differently, Steele proclaimed, “The problem we had is that too many of our friends, neighbors, colleagues, family members, are taking the hat off because we have decided we don’t like the way they wear it.” While the bewildered students stood in front of the crowd obediently for nearly ten minutes, Steele eventually concluded:

STEELE: Let me ask you, what do they have in common? They’re all wearing the same hat. […] The difference is, Barack Obama has asked your generation to wear his hat, his hat — the hat of one man. I’m asking you to go out and ask your friends to wear our hat -– the hat of an idea.

ThinkProgress attended the conference and caught the demonstration on video. Watch it:

Unconvinced by Steele’s unified hat theory, several College Republicans expressed their concern that the GOP establishment was moving to shut out fellow Republican Marco Rubio in favor Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate primary. Asked by one attendee about how to deal with RINOs (Republicans in name only), Steele replied, “I don’t know what that is. I’m just being honest with you.”

THOMAS: It is double standard, as usual. Rush is absolutely right, as usual. I went back and looked at some of the Republican nominees. Richard Nixon nominated two justices to the Supreme Court, named Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. Many Democrats denounced both of them as racist, one because he belonged to an all-white country club. that was enough for him. It depends on whose ox is being gored. A racist is a racist. If you think you are superior because of your race or gender, if that isn’t racist, what is?

Watch it:

It’s telling that Thomas mentioned the reasons that only one of Nixon’s nominees was considered racist. As Media Matters’ Jamison Foser noted last week when Pat Buchanan laughed about his support for Carswell, the judge’s nomination ran into trouble when “a blatantly racist” speech he delivered was revealed. “I believe that segregation of the races is proper … and the only practical and correct way of life in our states. I yield to no man in the firm, vigorous belief in the principles of white supremacy and I shall always be so governed,” said Carswell at an American Legion gathering.

Today, ThinkProgress’s Ian Millhiser appeared on MSNBC to discuss Sotomayor, opposite Buchanan. Buchanan declared Sotomayor favors a system in which “white males” get “retarded and held back.” Millhiser replied:

When you look at her record, you understand that this is a judge who understands that she has to follow the law, regardless of what is popular. … It doesn’t matter what Judge Sotomayor thinks about affirmative action personally, because when you look at her record, she has consistently followed the law.

“Judge Sotomayor is not waging a culture war against white America,” Millhiser added. Watch it:

BUCHANAN: Well I, again in that Saturday piece, she went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said. But she herself said she read, basically classic children’s books to read and learn the language and she read basic English grammars and she got help from tutors. I think that, I mean if you’re, frankly if you’re in college and you’re working on Pinocchio or on the troll under the bridge, I don’t think that’s college work.

Watch it:

Buchanan is referencing a recent New York Times article, which talked about how hard Sotomayor had to work to graduate at the top of her class from Princeton:

Judge Sotomayor is not known to have identified herself as a beneficiary of affirmative action, but she has described her academic struggles as a new student at Princeton from a Roman Catholic school in the Bronx — one of about 20 Hispanics on a campus with more than 2,000 students.

She spent summers reading children’s classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and “re-teaching” herself to write “proper English” by reading elementary grammar books. Only with the outside help of a professor who served as her mentor did she catch up academically, ultimately graduating at the top of her class.

Nowhere did the article say that all of this was Sotomayor’s “college work.” But Buchanan has been doing all he can in the past week to make it seem like Sotomayor is unqualified and simply an affirmative action nominee.

Buchanan has long claimed that Hispanic immigrants are resistant to learning English and has said that it would be easier for them to “assimilate” if they did so. When writing about Mexican immigrants in 2006, Buchanan said that in contrast to Italian immigrants, “millions of Mexicans are determined to retain their language and loyalty to Mexico.” Similarly, he has also said that “the road to culture is language” and “they want to keep their Spanish language.”

So basically, Buchanan yells when Hispanics are allegedly unwilling to learn English. However, when they make an attempt to do so, he mocks them as being dumb.

LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.

Finished with the race-based attack, Liddy moved on to denigrate Sotomayor’s gender:

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Finally, Liddy disputed the entire idea that there’s anything wrong with the paucity of women and total lack of Hispanics on the Court:

LIDDY: And everybody is cheering because Hispanics and females have been, quote, underrepresented, unquote. And as you pointed out, which I thought was quite insightful, the Supreme Court is not designed to be and should not be a representative body.

Listen here:

Liddy and his radical colleagues, mostly on the radio, are so far failing to get the conservative leadership on board with their racist and sexist attacks. Last night, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) called the attacks “terrible” and “wrong.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was asked if he agreed with Newt Gingrich’s characterization of Sotomayor as a “Latina woman racist.” “No, I don’t agree with that,” Hatch replied.

BARNES: I think you can make the case that she’s one of those who has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.

BENNETT: Yeah, well, maybe so. Did she get into Princeton on affirmative action, one wonders.

BARNES: One wonders.

BENNETT: Summa Cum Laude, I don’t think you get on affirmative action. I don’t know what her major was, but Summa Cum Laude’s a pretty big deal.

BARNES: I guess it is, but you know, there’s some schools and maybe Princeton’s not one of them, where if you don’t get Summa Cum Laude then or some kind of Cum Laude, you then, you’re a D+ student.

Listen here:

On Tuesday night, former Bush adviser Karl Rove said that despite her stellar academic credentials, Sotomayor was “not necessarily” smart. “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools,” said Rove.

Transcript:

BENNETT: She does have an interesting life story.

BARNES: She does have an interesting life story, but then so did Clarence Thomas. That didn’t seem to have much bearing on…

BENNETT: That’s exactly right.

BARNES: On the Supreme, on the Judiciary Committee. You know, 48 voted against him. So, that’s fine. But look, that’s, I mean, the life story shouldn’t make any difference. Remember the figure of justice is blind.

BENNETT: Yeah, exactly, that’s right.

BARNES: They’re not supposed to be ruling on the basis of their life experience, even when it sounds pretty great. I think you can make the case that she’s one of those who has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.

BENNETT: Yeah, well, maybe so. Did she get into Princeton on affirmative action, one wonders.

BARNES: One wonders.

BENNETT: Summa Cum Laude, I don’t think you get on affirmative action. I don’t know what her major was, but Summa Cum Laude’s a pretty big deal.

BARNES: I guess it is, but you know, there’s some schools and maybe Princeton’s not one of them, where if you don’t get Summa Cum Laude then or some kind of Cum Laude, you then, you’re a D+ student.

BENNETT: That ain’t one of them, I know, because I’ve got two boys there and that’s the grade deflation thanks to your buddy and my buddy Robbie George. He started, he said they’re grading too high. Now this may have been before the grade deflation thing, but they’ve had a movement there at Princeton to cut those grades way down.

Host Norah O’Donnell pointed out that women have also been left out of serious consideration in the past and maybe “there weren’t any white men who were qualified” who were qualified this time. Buchanan responded that she was being bigoted. When guest Lawrence O’Donnell asked him if he would have been similarly outraged if it had been all men — and no women — as finalists, Buchanan avoided the question:

BUCHANAN: Look, are you going to let me talk, Lawrence? You got down to four women, not a single white male — all women.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Did it ever occur to you, Pat, that maybe there weren’t any white men who were qualified?

BUCHANAN: Yes. No, it did not occur to me. You mean there are no white males qualified? That would be an act of bigotry to make a statement like that. [...]

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well Pat, if it gets down to four, you’re suggesting it’s an absolute outrage if the final four are women. If got down to final four and they were all white men, would that bother you in the least?

BUCHANAN: I don’t say it’s an outrage, I say it’s affirmative action. They were picked because she’s a woman and a Hispanic and you know it as well as I do.

Watch it:

We can always count on Buchanan to advocate in favor of a system that guarantees advantages for white men. With his arguments that slavery was a good thing for black people (“It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million”), wishing for a country where whites comprise 89 or 90 percent of the population, or saying that Hispanics “do not wish to assimilate,” Buchanan has little credibility left on issues of what is fair on race and gender.

“It’s like watching a dead fish flop around on the deck,” said Lawrence O’Donnell at the end of the segment. “You’re dead on this one, Pat. It’s all over.”

Transcript:

BUCHANAN: Look, are you going to let me talk, Lawrence? You got down to four women, not a single white male — all women.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Did it ever occur to you, Pat, that maybe there weren’t any white men who were qualified?

BUCHANAN: Yes. No, it did not occur to me. You mean there are no white males qualified? That would be an act of bigotry to make a statement like that.

NORAH O’DONNELL: In the past there have been no women that have been qualified.

BUCHANAN: They certainly have been qualified in the past. I don’t doubt that they are. But probably half of the great lawyers and judges are white males in this country. To rule them out, why? Because of sex and because of their race is wrong, I think. At least it’s affirmative action.

NORAH O’DONNELL: I don’t think you have proof that they did that. The President reportedly —

BUCHANAN: How did he come down to four women?

NORAH O’DONNELL: He said that they were the best and met the views that he had, the particular criteria.

BUCHANAN: In other words what were the criteria? One it’s got to be a woman, the other it’s an Hispanic — that’s affirmative action.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Lawrence, do you want to offer a rejoinder to that?

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well Pat, if it gets down to four, you’re suggesting it’s an absolute outrage if the final four are women. If got down to final four and they were all white men, would that bother you in the least?

BUCHANAN: I don’t say it’s an outrage, I say it’s affirmative action. They were picked because she’s a woman and a Hispanic and you know it as well as I do. [...]

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Hopeless argument, Pat. It’s like watching a dead fish flop around on the deck. You’re dead on this one, Pat. It’s all over.

BUCHANAN: If we’re held now, we’d be goners. But I’ll tell you this — let me bet, I’ll disagree with Joe, there will be more than 15 votes against her. If more comes up, there will be more votes. This just started.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Wow, wow. Fifteen.

In response, many in the media have asked why Cheney — someone who had avoided the media at all costs during his eight years as vice president — would be airing his opinions in such a forceful and public way. Indeed, Cheney himself has answered this question, claiming he is speaking out because he believes that torture and other Bush administration anti-terror policies — many of which Obama is abandoning — were “exactly the right thing to do” and that “there isn’t anybody there on the other side to tell the truth.”

In turn, media figures have answered the question in much the same way. “I think he genuinely believes we are threatened now more because of what Obama is doing,” MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan has said. CNN’s David Gergen said, “I think Dick Cheney almost has a Churchillian view of this, and that is somebody has got to stand up and be the voice in the wilderness.” But while the narrative of Cheney’s motives focuses mainly on the righteous, it has all but ignored the selfish — that Cheney is trying to muddle the public debate with the goal of reducing public support for a criminal inquiry into the torture regime that he authorized.

Last night on CNN, however, Cheney’s daughter Liz revealed that fear of prosecution is indeed a motivating factor in the former vice president’s current media campaign:

L. CHENEY: I don’t think he planned to be doing this, you know, when they left office in January. But I think, as it became clear that President Obama was not only going to be stopping some of these policies, that he was going to be doing things like releasing the — the techniques themselves, so that the terrorists could now train to them, that he was suggesting that perhaps we would even be prosecuting former members of the Bush administration.

Watch it:

Does Liz Cheney also fear that her dad will be prosecuted for his role in the Bush administration’s torture program? Perhaps so. As Steve Benen has noted, “Liz Cheney has been all over the television news” as well, with “12 appearances, in nine and a half days, spanning four networks.”