Why Can't MSNBC Have a Debate on Race or Immigration Without Including Their Favorite Racist, Uncle Pat Buchanan?

Posted: 22 Apr 2011 05:00 PM PDT

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Hardball's Chris Matthews decided to have a conversation about President Obama's recent meeting with on immigration reform. And true to form, MSNBC just had to bring on Pat Buchanan for commentary, because heaven knows they can't seem to have a discussion on race or immigration on that network without their resident flame thrower and racist in chief.
Buchanan blames the failure of the DREAM Act last January on Harry Reid, and says he should have mustered up the votes when Democrats still had control of the Congress. Never mind the fact that Reid's never had any kind of progressive majority there between "Independent" Joe Lieberman and the Blue Dogs he's had to contend with, along with the Republicans' willingness to obstruct and filibuster literally everything he tried to pass with fanatical uniformity.
Buchanan also blithely talks about sending those kids back to where they supposedly came from, when the ones the DREAM ACT would have affected don't know any other home, they've been here so long. No, in Pat's mind, "they broke into the country." That's some way to talk about little children, many of whom were too young to even understand what was going on when their parents brought them here. (Indeed, many of them are the children of parents who are now legal citizens.)
I don't disagree with Buchanan that they ought to go after the businesses taking advantage of people for cheap labor. But the demonization of the people coming here looking for work is nothing but divide-and-conquer fearmongering, where you pit one working person against another -- a strategy Pat Buchanan has been practicing for decades now, and, sadly, one MSNBC allows him to continue every time they have him on the air to discuss race relations or immigration.