Pat Buchanan: Christian monarchy is fine with me

[dorkulon]

Just saw this exchange on Hardball. Pat can be so smart sometimes it's easy to forget what a nut he really is, so I thought I'd post this little reminder.

The subject is Iran. Pat starts out well, endorsing Obama's handling of the strife in Iran (for some in GD-P, this makes him better than Maddow or Olbermann). Joan Walsh says how great it is that Dems and Repubs all agree on the importance of democracy. Chris hears an opportunity to needle Pat on his latent fascism.

Chris Matthews: I don't want to let Pat off the hook. Could it be that Wolfy, Wolfowitz, one of the real intellectuals of the neocon school, that you normally disagree with and I disagree with on military policy, could be right about the ideology they hold that there is an incipient democracy in the Middle East and that we ought to tap it? Are they right more now than they were a week ago?

Pat Buchanan: I think in the Middle East, everybody in the Middle East would like to vote for their own leaders. In Iran, that is pro-American but in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, I'll tell you, the pro-American governments would go down and you would get the Muslim Brotherhood, and another Iran in Saudi Arabia.

CM: And we'd have to live with it. And that's why you Pat Buchanan, although you are a libertarian in many ways, you do not--no, you're a nationalist actually--you are not what you like to call, derisively, a democratist.

PB: No, I don't believe there's a great salvation in a political process at all. I believe in different--in far different things. I put democracy far down the line in the--I think a devoutly Christian, conservative traditionalist country, even if it's a monarchy, is fine with me.

CM: Your Franco is talking, Pat. Franco is speaking even now.

PB: Well he was better than the alternative, Chris.

So, for Buchanan, the only problem with theocracy in Iran is that it's the wrong religion being used to oppress people.

One thing I noticed was that Buchanan was gone from the airwaves last week, when Von Brunn and Roeder had sparked a nationwide discussion of domestic right wing terrorism. He was gone from MSNBC and The McLaughlin Group. Normally I can't turn on my TV without seeing the old cracker. I wonder what he would have said had he been on. I wonder if that's why he wasn't on.

I understand why Buchanan gets this kind of work--he has been articulating conservative arguments better than nearly anyone else for decades, and he doesn't just shout his opponents down, but considers their points and responds intelligently, not with dumb name-calling. But his beliefs are a lot more extreme than most Republicans, and now here he is pretty much coming out in favor of a Christian theocratic revolution. I don't know, I guess I should be used to it, but this seems like a pretty serious thing for him to say. What if Rush said it? What if Cheney said it? Why does Pat get away with it?