Republicans: Whitman, Buchanan and Terror

Aired, Shows | katherine, July 7th, 2005

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The Republican Party in Washington DC today are the sort of people we went into politics to run out of town. … We have become what we opposed. When I came in I knew young men in their 20s who went work for Richard Milhouse Nixon who are are now as great a part of the problem as multimillionaire lobbyists. They are on both sides of every question. They are big government men, pork barrelers, interventionists, globalists, they go into the tank on social and cultural issues. They are now the adversary.

Pat Buchanan

Chris’s Billboard

What is the center of our politics that holds… when the Supreme Court of the United States is suddenly open to realignment; or more particularly when the blood-dimmed tide of terrorism is loosed on subway and bus commuters in London; when it could seem that things are falling apart and the centre is really in danger? The Supreme Court fight over Justice O’Connor’s seat, and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s in another round soon, will take place in far-right field this summer and fall. But the war and security issues on American minds are also starkly polarized as they never used to be: 43 percent support for President Bush in the new Zogby poll, 42 percent for impeachment proceedings if he misled the nation into war in Iraq. We’re talking this hour about how we ran out of moderates and maneuvering room, even in the President’s old Main St. Republican Party.

Patrick Buchanan

You know this guy. One-time Nixon speechwriter, one-time Republican hardliner, now, strangely, a Republican maverick. Buchanan can be counted on to speak his truth; his truth right now is that terrorism is a necessary consequence of empire, and perhaps it is our empire, not our strategy on terrorism, that we should be reconsidering.

Adrian Wooldridge

Washington Bureau Chief and “Lexington” Columnist, The Economist
Author, The Right Nation

Christie Todd Whitman

Former Governor of New Jersey. Former EPA Administrator during Bush’s first term. Author of It’s My Party Too.

Kevin Phillips

Political analyst. Worked on the 1968 Nixon campaign. Author of The Emerging Republican Majority and American Dynasty.