On this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group,” conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?,” excoriated President Barack Obama for his lack of participation in the Wisconsin recall election last week, in which pro-union forces failed in their efforts to replace current Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.
In 2007, Obama said in a campaign speech that he would “put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself” and “walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America” in support of collective bargaining rights. But in the Wisconsin battle, Obama was missing in action.
“I will tell you why he didn’t go into Wisconsin,” Buchanan said. “Obama doesn’t go in where it doesn’t help Obama. I’ve never seen anyone who never goes to the wall for somebody else. I don’t think — I understand why guys on the Hill don’t feel loyal to him. How many guys has he fallen on his sword for in his whole career?”
According to the former MSNBC contributor, Obama had a duty to go into Wisconsin to support Barrett’s efforts.
“Even if he was going to lose, I think you go in there and stand by your guy,” he said. “Those union guys, I don’t agree with them, but they went to the wall for Obama.”
Buchanan recalled the 1964 trouncing Barry Goldwater took from President Lyndon Johnson, adding that former President Ronald Reagan would have been in Wisconsin given similar circumstances.
“It is like the Goldwater thing,” he said. “We knew we were going down the tubes, but your guys walked away from you … Reagan was a conviction politician. Reagan would have gone in for them.”