Mr. Carlson-never really a card-carrying member of the vast right-wing conspiracy-said he had broken off from the hawkish neoconservatives who flogged the war from the get-go. “I’m getting more paleo every day,” he said, referring to the so-called paleoconservatives.
Mr. Carlson was beginning to sound a bit like former Nixon speechwriter and Crossfire alum Pat Buchanan, another righty who has been an opponent of the war. In the past, said Mr. Carlson, he had made some unfair attacks against Mr. Buchanan, and he was feeling guilty about that, too.
“Buchanan is a perfect example of somebody who’s been name-called into oblivion,” he said. “And I did some of that. I definitely called Pat a lot of names. And I feel bad about that. I think he deserved some of those names. On the other hand, calling people names is a way of ignoring what they’re saying. It’s actually an outrage, and I actually feel really bad about my role in that.”
What kind of names?
“I wrote two different pieces calling him an anti-Semite,” said Mr. Carlson. “And while he may be an anti-Semite, I would say, in Buchanan’s case, not all his ideas are crazy.”
Mr. Carlson said he called Mr. Buchanan last year and apologized to him personally. “He was completely confused, I think,” he recalled.
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