Yesterday, I commented on the Intelligencer editorial that attacked Hillary Clinton's for her assertion that half of Donald Trump's followers were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic ("deplorables"). The paper's defense was that she was attacking them because they disagreed with her; Trump's own words and what his followers told pollsters about their beliefs were never mentioned.

Today, the Intelligencer printed two syndicated columnists who defended the "deplorables " and attacked Hillary Clinton. Like our local "newspaper," neither columnist chose to mention any of Trump's outrageous remarks and neither cited any polling on whether Clinton's comments had any basis in fact. And even though the column was not about the president, both found ways to work Obama's 2008 "guns and religion" comment into their columns. Of the two, Cal Thomas (his column can be read here) took the relatively higher road by tempering his remarks with the notion that this type of campaigning has historically been a part of our elections.

There was no "higher road" for Pat Buchanan (read him here) who fell back on his own racist and xenophobic arguments with the hint of scary black and brown people thrown in for good measure:

Politically and demographically, America is at a tipping point.

Minorities are now 40 percent of the population and will be 30 percent of the electorate in November. If past trends hold, 4 of 5 will vote for Clinton.

Meanwhile, white folks, who normally vote 60 percent Republican, will fall to 70 percent of the electorate, the lowest ever, and will decline in every subsequent presidential year.

The passing of the greatest generation and silent generation, and, soon, the baby-boom generation, is turning former red states like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada purple, and putting crucial states like Florida and Ohio in peril.

What has happened to America is astonishing. A country 90 percent Christian after World War II has been secularized by a dictatorial Supreme Court with only feeble protest and resistance.

A nation, 90 percent of whose population traced their roots to Europe, will have been changed by mass immigration and an invasion across its Southern border into a predominantly Third World country by 2042.

What will then be left of the old America to conserve?

Every time Pat Buchanan goes on one of his xenophobic and/or racist rants I'm reminded of Molly Ivins comment after Buchanan's "culture wars" speech at the 1992 Republican Convention: "It probably sounded better in the original German."

(For those who are unfamiliar with Molly Ivins (1944 - 2007), she was the rarest of political writers -- someone who understood politics, wrote well, and could make you laugh out loud as you read her column. I miss her. In my opinion, the only contemporary writer who comes close to Ivins is Charlie Pierce. A short collection of some of Ivins' more memorable lines can be found here.