Buchanan Declines Nixon’s Exit Advice

Republican presidential challenger Patrick J. Buchanan met Saturday with former President Richard M. Nixon but rejected advice from his one-time boss that he end his candidacy before California’s June 2 primary.

Buchanan met with Nixon in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., and said later that the man he once served as a White House speech writer told him that by continuing his campaign against President Bush through the California vote he would run the risk of dividing the GOP heading into the November election.

Buchanan said he told the former President that despite the advice, his campaign was “going to go on to California.” But he added: “I respect his opinion and respect what he had to say.”

During an appearance Saturday on a CNN news program, Buchanan said he intends to stay in the race to “win back the heart and soul of the Republican Party.”

Buchanan said: “I’m in this to influence the direction of our country and to recapture the Republican Party for things I believe in. The way you do that is you keep on fighting. You don’t quit.

“We’re still challenging (Bush) for the Republican nomination, even though he’s far ahead. . . . We’re going to go into North Carolina and contest that, and we’re going on to California and contest that in June.”

Buchanan vowed to attend the Republican National Convention in Houston on Aug. 17, but said he is not ready to sit down with Bush campaign strategists to cut a deal on his role at the convention.

When asked if he was positioning himself for the 1996 presidential election, Buchanan said the front-runner will be Vice President Dan Quayle.

But he also said that the rest of his campaign would not take on as negative a tone as it had in the past. He said he would not pound Bush as hard in California’s primary, a state that may be crucial to Bush’s reelection.

“We’re going to campaign up and down that state on the issues. We’re not going to attack the President personally,” he said.

Illegal immigration will emerge as a major issue in California, and Buchanan will call on Bush to enforce U.S. immigration laws in the Southwest, he said.

“If George Bush can send an army halfway around the world to defend the border of Saudi Arabia, why can’t he defend the borders of the United States?” Buchanan said.

Later in the day at a rally in Connecticut, which holds its primary Tuesday, Buchanan said that his presence in the race is forcing the President to concede some positions to the conservative movement.

Buchanan said he has forced Bush to admit that he made a mistake when he went along with a congressional budget agreement that raised taxes.

And he said that his attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts for funding what Buchanan called “obscene” art caused the Administration to force out the NEA director.