"Buchanan had never held elective office, but he'd worked as an advisor in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and was an outspoken pundit on the far right of American politics, with regular appearances on PBS, CNN, and his own syndicated radio show. He was a principal architect of the "southern strategy," which he'd laid out in a 1971 memo to President Nixon, whereby the Republican Party captured white Democratic voters in the South by appealing to their racism. In a 1993 column, Buchanan wrote, "How long is this endless groveling before every cry of 'racism' going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?""