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Pat Buchanan Dropped as MSNBC Commentator, Criticized for Racist Views

The onetime presidential candidate, who has strongly conservative views, was removed from the liberal news network.

By Jonathan P. Hicks

Posted: 02/17/2012 12:57 PM EST

Filed Under Republican Party, U.S. Supreme Court, affirmative action, President Obama, National News, MSNBC

Pat Buchanan, epublican Party, U.S. Supreme Court, affirmative action, President Obama, National News, MSNBC

MSNBC has dropped the conservative commentator and onetime presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, bowing to criticism that his latest book contained racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic sentiment.

Buchannan was suspended by the network last month, following the publication of his book, “Suicide of a Superpower.” The book included chapters titled “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America.”

When Buchannan was first suspended, MSNBC President Phil Griffin said he did not consider Buchanan's book something that “should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.” The network said that "after 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well."

Buchannan was a senior adviser to Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. He was the original host of CNN’s news program Crossfire. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1991 and 1996. In 2000, he ran for president on the Reform Party ticket.

He is staunchly conservative and was a co-founder of The American Conservative magazine. He also launched the American Cause, a conservative foundation aimed at promoting “traditional American values.”

Buchanan is certainly out of step with many of the people who are commentators on MSNBC, which has a decidedly left-of-center point of view.

He is vehemently opposed to affirmative action and was the object of strong condemnation when he criticized President Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic member of the United States Supreme Court. Buchanan, chastising the selection as one based on affirmative action, said, “This has been a country basically built by white folks.”

In a column, Buchanan denied that he harbored racist feelings and called the network’s decision to oust him “an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.”

In his column, Buchanan wrote that advocacy groups like Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League label people as racists or anti-Semites if they dare "to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate." They seek to silence and censor dissent while proclaiming devotion to the First Amendment," he said.

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