CAMPAIGN ’96 : For Buchanan, It’s Become a Battle to Revamp His Party

With his hopes of becoming the Republican nominee all but dashed, Patrick J. Buchanan emerged Wednesday re-energized and brimming with determination to continue the populist conservative crusade that he began four years ago.

“We are going to fight until hell freezes over and then we’re going to fight on the ice,” a pumped-up Buchanan told a wildly receptive crowd of several hundred people crammed into a steamy tent in Tampa.

Talking to reporters earlier, in Miami, where he started his day, Buchanan conceded that Kansas Sen. Bob Dole had likely locked up the GOP nomination by sweeping eight primaries on Tuesday, including a key race in Georgia.

“It would take a great break and a sudden explosion for us to be the nominee,” Buchanan said. “We don’t see that right now.”

But as he learned that two other GOP presidential hopefuls, Lamar Alexander and Sen. Richard G. Lugar, were dropping out of the race because they had lost hopes of winning the White House, Buchanan flatly dismissed that as an option for himself.

“That’s not what we’re about,” he said. “We’re about changing America, changing the Republican Party, moving the center of gravity of American politics toward the ideas I think are best for my country.”

Addressing Cuban Americans at the popular Versailles restaurant in Little Havana, Buchanan appeared to have shaken off all the gloom that emanated from him Tuesday evening when he first learned he might lose big in the day’s primaries. And as his day continued--with rallies from Miami to Tampa to a final, enthusiastic session here, he seemed surprisingly upbeat about his involuntary metamorphosis from would-be nominee to crusade leader.

“This isn’t about a man, it’s about something much bigger than a man, it’s a cause,” he told the tightly packed, enthusiastic crowd. “We don’t know what the word ‘quit’ means in the Buchanan campaign.”

His new mission, Buchanan suggested, is to go beyond the role of protest candidate that he played deftly during the 1992 campaign and use his leverage to alter the platform of the Republican Party to reflect his priorities.

And should the party fail to heed his call, he warned, it could be courting disaster.

For himself, he insisted as he spoke to reporters that he would not run as an independent. “I’m going to go to the Republican convention,” he said. “I’m not going to do anything to reelect Bill Clinton.”

But, he warned: “There’s a tremendous movement behind Buchanan, which is not only inside the Republican Party, but it’s among independents and it’s among Democrats.”

“And if you have a Clinton-Dole race, there will be a vacuum in national politics. And that vacuum, my guess is, will be filled.”

At the convention, Buchanan said, he and his supporters will demand that the party’s platform include his priorities for America.

“We had 82 delegates in 1992 and we wrote the platform,” he said. This time, with much deeper support, he said, his impact would be “even stronger.”

For starters, he said, he believes his delegates will ensure that Dole selects an antiabortion running mate, warning that Dole would have a significant walkout on his hands if he nominated a candidate who supports abortion rights.

In recent days, Buchanan has repeatedly stressed other priorities, ranging from repealing NAFTA and GATT and ending U.S. participation in multinational organizations, such as the United Nations, to dismantling the Department of Education, returning prayer to schools and restoring George Washington’s birthday as a holiday in place of the generic Presidents’ Day.

But he has not yet indicated which, if any, of those issues might join opposition to abortion on his list of absolute demands.

Among Buchanan’s followers in Florida, many urged him to carry on.

“Even if he’s not going to win, he has a very large minority of passionate supporters, and I think he can influence a lot of the Republican platform,” said Anna Cox, 56, an affluent Tampa resident who formerly taught English as a second language but is now a homemaker. “He can hold Dole’s feet to the fire if nothing else.”

Dean Pappas, 46, a real estate agent in nearby Clearwater and a member of United We Stand America Inc.--the group that grew out of Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential bid--said he believes Buchanan could easily capture the nomination of that movement.

“I think he should continue his campaign as United We Stand’s candidate all the way to November,” Pappas said. “He can win because Clinton’s in trouble with Whitewater and Dole is weak. I believe in Pat because I think he can reestablish our country by putting a moratorium on immigration and bringing back the factories.”

“I think he’s waking up America,” said Francis Collins, 57, a retired funeral director who went to high school with Buchanan and attended the Tampa rally. “I think America has to change itself, but someone needs to bring the ideas forward, and he’s doing it. Even my liberal Democratic mother is going to vote for him.”

For now, those sorts of comments are enough to bring a smile to Buchanan’s face despite his losses. “We are driving the agenda,” he said. The GOP is “becoming a Pat Buchanan party.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to be the nominee,” he added, “but it’s going to be a Pat Buchanan party.”