Reb-publicans

It’s Secession Week here at h.v.s.

Didn’t intend it that way, but that’s the way it’s worked out.

Funny about all that “Southern  Heritage” that none of ‘em seem to notice that it was Republicans that were instrumental in losing their cause. But that’s to come.

Tonight, I happened to catch Chris “Tweety” Matthews’  generally obnoxious “Hard Ball” on MSNBC, and I witnessed something astonishing: The meltdown of Pat Buchanan.

And not just ANY meltdown. The meltdown of a “Lost Cause” Southern apologist. He had obviously argued this before, because the talking points sprung forth, fully formed, and full-tilt-boogie looney tunes.

Buchanan melts down. Hardball, April 8, 2010.

You need to watch the video. Buchanan veers off into Karazee Karacker Konfederate apologist land, and it’s not a pretty sight. Nothing is resolved, but one VERY large can of worms gets opened. Trust me.

This isn’t the first time I’ve caught Pat in strange wacko territory. I reported that he seems to regularly allow his columns to be reprinted on David Duke’s website, along with his sister Bay. (“Heart of Darkness,” 11 February 2009.)

A query to MSNBC produced nothing.

A search of Duke’s site turns up about 440 hits on “Pat Buchanan” — mostly his columns.

And Buchanan’s  columns have also been spotted in the Council of Conservative Citizens’ quarterly newsletter, the Citizen Informer.

I’ve covered the CCC and its virulent “Lost Cause” historical revisionism before, a decade and more ago.  Indeed, if there is an American parallel to “holocaust denial” the CCC is foremost in that pack.

Which ought to whet your whistle for what’s coming tomorrow, because I’m ready to finish up an investigation that I started over a decade before this. (There’s just not time tonight).

But to tease you a little bit further, consider this, taken from the CCC website in 2002. And I promise I’ll tie up the Virginia governor, the “Lost Cause” movement, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a few others.  Meantime (and I DO mean “mean”):

I am reminded, for example, of Thomas Dixon, of Winston-Salem, NC, author of The Clansman, the novel that inspired the great film Birth of a Nation. The story, which dealt with the attempts of a vanquished Southern society to defend itself from the chaos of military occupation, nevertheless unaccountably treats Old Abe with sympathy, even reverence. So, too, do most authors, contemporary and otherwise, even those nominally on “our” side. Consider Shelby Foote, for example, that one shining light in the Burnsean darkness. In one of Burns’ episodes, Foote tells of speaking with a descendant of General Forrest, remarking to her his belief that two bonafide geniuses emerged from the War: her ancestor and Abraham Lincoln. The lady paused unexpectedly, then replied: “In my family, Mr. Foote, we don’t think too well of Mr. Lincoln.”

Well, in my family neither do we. As a boy, I enjoyed playing with my “Civil War” set of toy figures by Marx, which included a yellow figure of Lincoln. After every battle, ending in an inevitable Confederate victory, I would tie a short length of tobacco twine around the old tyrant’s neck and he would proceed to swing grandly for his many crimes against humanity.

For Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant, surely the most evil American in history, who to preserve his own political regime brought death to at least 600,000 Confederates and Yankees, and destroyed the lives and the way of life of uncounted millions of Southerners. In addition, he oppressed his own people in the North to such an extent that huge numbers of them, from New York to Chicago and beyond, were ready late in the War to rise up and throw off his dictatorship. His was a regime dedicated to power and held together only by the most brutal and draconian power ever employed in America. Below is a summary of some of the man’s qualities…. [emphasis added]

Tomorrow, a good, old-fashioned weenie roast.

And Pat Buchanan is just small potatoes.

But, considering that crazy old Pat was a Nixon speechwriter, Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” ought to be considered in a whole new light.

Or darkness.

Courage.