WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish Democrats launched a petition calling on a columnist syndicate to drop Pat Buchanan.
The National Jewish Democratic Council said a recent column by the three-time presidential candidate questioning President Obama’s pick of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court was intolerant because it made an issue of her Jewish faith.
"If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats," Buchanan wrote in a column titled "Are liberals anti-WASP?" an outdated formulation for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
The NJDC launched a petition Monday asking the Creators Syndicate to drop Buchanan.
"Last week, you allowed him yet again to continue his fixation with Jews," the NJDC petition said, referring to Buchanan’s oft-stated charge that U.S. Jews have outsized influence, "this time criticizing President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, simply because she’s Jewish."
Buchanan, a former official of the Nixon and Reagan administrations, ran in the Republican Party primaries in 1992 and 1996 and as a Reform Party candidate in 2000.
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