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Pat Buchanan and his extremist allies are up in arms over liberal media watchdog groups’ recently launched campaign to get him fired from his news analyst position at MSNBC.

Following Buchanan’s Saturday appearance on James Edwards’ racist radio program “Political Cesspool,” to promote his new book, Suicide of a Superpower, Color of Change and Media Matters for America initiated a call for MSNBC to terminate Buchanan’s position. (Full disclosure: Color of Change was co-founded by James Rucker, a member of the board at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes this blog.)

Said Color of Change in a letter that doubled as a petition: “For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it. Buchanan has just published a book which says that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the ‘End of White America.’ This weekend, to promote his book, he went on a white supremacist radio show whose host has said things like ‘MLK’s dream is our nightmare,’ and ‘interracial sex is white genocide.’ Buchanan has the right to express his views, but he’s not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC wants to be seen as a trusted, mainstream source of news and commentary, it needs to fire Buchanan now.”

Media Matters said much the same: “For too long, your network has ignored Buchanan’s bigotry. But, enough is enough. MSNBC has the power to send a message — that it will not tolerate bigotry by its employees, on its airwaves or off.”

That letter, which also doubles as a petition, closed by suggesting MSNBC executives review documentation (here and here) detailing Buchanan’s history of bigoted comments, and asking that they “Please … take the necessary steps to ensure that MSNBC stops supporting Buchanan’s bigotry.”

Some on the extreme right are incensed by the watchdogs’ campaign.

Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation (one of the Tea Party movement’s most extreme factions) – has leaped to Buchanan’s defense. In a blog post yesterday, Phillips – who claims not to be a Buchanan fan – wrote: “The racist in this story is the group, the Color of Change. … MSNBC does have some conservative voices. Pat Buchanan is one of them. … [T]he left wing racist nuts at the Color of Change want that to end.” And the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist hate group that has called blacks a “retrograde species of humanity,” also expressed strong support for Buchanan and Edwards.