By Patrick J. Buchanan

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on” than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has told USA TODAY.

She cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Hillary. “These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that.”

The Democratic Party can’t win with just “eggheads and African-Americans,” Paul Begala added helpfully.

What Hillary and Begala are saying is politically incorrect, but it is also patently true. Hillary was describing what may now fairly be called the Hillary Democrats — a.k.a. the ex-Reagan Democrats who did not vote for Obama and may defect to John McCain. Read more »

By Patrick Buchanan 

Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq, declared Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week.

How? Gen. David Petraeus explained. The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah are arming, training and directing the Shia militia fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces in Basra and firing rockets into the Green Zone. Said Petraeus, the Quds Force is responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers.

If true, these are acts of war from a privileged sanctuary. And Bush would be as justified in attacking these Iranian base camps as was Nixon in ordering U.S. forces to clean out the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. Read more »

It was said behind closed doors to the chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.

Like Dr. Schweitzer, home from Africa to address the Royal Society on the customs of the upper Zambezi, Barack described Pennsylvanians in their native habitats of Atloona, Alquippa, Johnstown and McKeesport.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and … the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Read more »

The neocons may yet get their war on Iran.

Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East.

Iran, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, has “fueled the recent violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support of the special groups.”

These “special groups” are “funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran’s Quds Force with help from Lebanese Hezbollah. It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq’s seat of government (the Green Zone) … causing loss of innocent life and fear in the capital.” Read more »

“Yes, it was a good war,” writes Richard Cohen in his column challenging the thesis of pacifist Nicholson Baker in his new book, “Human Smoke,” that World War II produced more evil than good.

Baker’s compelling work, which uses press clips and quotes of Axis and Allied leaders as they plunged into the great cataclysm, is a virtual diary of the days leading up to World War II.

Riveting to this writer was that Baker uses some of the same episodes, sources and quotes as this author in my own book out in May, “Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War.’”

On some points, Cohen is on sold ground. There are things worth fighting for: God and country, family and freedom. Martyrs have ever inspired men. And to some evils pacifism is no answer. Resistance, even unto death, may be required of a man. Read more »

In his Philadelphia address on race, Sen. Obama identified as a root cause of white resentment affirmative action — the punishing of white working- and middle-class folks for sins they did not commit:

“Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,” said Barack. “As far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything. … So when they … hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed … resentment builds over time.”

On this issue, Barack seemed to have nailed it. Read more »