Buchanan Fires a Warning Shot at GOP : Republicans: If the party doesn’t shape up, disenchanted conservatives may form their own by 1996, candidate says.

Republican presidential challenger Patrick J. Buchanan warned Sunday that unless he wins the 1992 nomination or President Bush embraces his brand of conservatism, a new third party composed of angry and disenchanted Republicans is likely to be formed before the 1996 presidential elections.

Buchanan repeated his pledge to support the party’s nominee this fall, but he refused to rule out his participation in a rival party for the 1996 elections.

“There is a vacuum in American politics for an ‘America first’ point of view and for small government conservatism and for traditional family values,” Buchanan told reporters here as he emerged from services at People’s Baptist Church. “If these aren’t represented by the establishment of both parties, then something new, I think, is almost certain to emerge.”

Throughout his challenge to displace Bush as the party’s 1992 nominee, Buchanan has sought to push the party toward the hard-line conservatism espoused by former President Ronald Reagan. The former communications director in the Reagan White House is given little chance of winning the GOP nomination this year.

Buchanan raised the specter of a third party that might siphon votes of some conservatives away from a GOP nominee Saturday night during a rally of young Republicans in Midland, Mich. He told the 400 or so gathered at the meeting that he could “guarantee” the emergence of a third party in 1996, if current polices espoused by Bush continue. In particular, he criticized the President for working with liberal Democrats to raise taxes and enact civil rights legislation that he said forces business to use quotas in its hiring policies.

“If the Republican Party doesn’t get back to the conservative views and conservative values in 1992 and they stay a one-party government where Democrats and Republicans conspire with one another and collaborate with one another against the national interest of the American people, then in 1996 you will have a brand-new third party,” Buchanan said. “I can guarantee you that.”

However, after sleeping over his remarks, Buchanan told reporters that it would be “a little strong” to suggest that he was advocating the formation of a third party.

“I have not made any threats or challenges or statements of what I’m going to do,” he said. “Only thing I’ve said I was going to do is support the Republican nominee in the fall.”

Asked about 1996, Buchanan smiled and said that is “too far away. I don’t even know what’s going to happen on Tuesday” in primaries in Illinois and Michigan, where Buchanan is campaigning among religious conservatives and angry auto workers.

Greg Mueller, Buchanan’s press secretary, said in an interview that Buchanan’s comments were intended as “a warning to the Republican Party that George Bush needs right now to shape up.”

He said that Buchanan is not conducting his current campaign as an exploratory drive for a third-party run for the White House in 1996. “I don’t know what will happen after 1992,” he said. “Nobody can say today what they will be doing in four years.”

But Mueller said that Buchanan is convinced voters in both parties are unhappy with the current slate of establishment candidates and that his primary goal in the campaign is to give disgruntled, conservative voters “someplace to go” to register a protest.

Buchanan’s comment regarding a third party “was a warning shot to save our party from losing these voters” by 1996. “They’re losing them by the thousands day by day,” Mueller said.