Key to Buchanan Speeches Is Variations on a Theme

Patrick J. Buchanan is like a clairvoyant doctor; even before the patient says ouch he knows exactly where it hurts.

As the masterful orator and Republican presidential candidate skips around the country--addressing crowds of disaffected Americans in school gymnasiums, airplane hangars and town squares--his humorous, anti-establishment diatribes touch the sorest spots of resentment gnawing inside his followers.

The crowds react with different intensity to the various themes in his campaign speech. Responding to his audience as he goes along, he picks the spot that seems to evoke the most angst and probes it with poignant anecdotes and dark, caustic jokes.

And he drives the point home with knowing local references. He mentioned Cuban President Fidel Castro in Miami. In Arizona, it was English-only legislation and immigration. In South Carolina, he defended The Citadel in its drive to remain an all-male military academy. And elsewhere in Florida, it was the tomato farmers upset about Mexican imports.

He stands up for controversial causes that strike deep chords with particular constituencies. He denounces--in audacious language--a range of mainstream institutions from the United Nations to corporate America to the U.S. Education Department. And today in Louisiana, he zeroed in on abortion, warning opponents that Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) “will sell you out” at the GOP convention by picking an abortion rights supporter as a running mate.

As Buchanan’s prospects for the nomination dwindle, his catalog of resentments only seems to grow. Almost everywhere, he is rewarded with delighted whoops, ear-piercing whistles, loud boos for his targets and resounding amens.

In Columbus, Ga., Buchanan pointedly attacked multinational organizations and transnational corporations--and the political establishment that he says is surrendering America’s sovereignty to do their bidding. With that, he had Joseph Akin jumping to his feet again and again, venting his rage and shouting, “Go Pat Go!”

Akin, 48, is an industrial mechanic who makes blades for jet engines. His hands are blackened with graphite that doesn’t come off after washing them six times and taking a shower.

*

What makes him angry, he said, is that the company he has given his brain and brawn to for the last dozen years is negotiating to open a plant in China to make the blades there.

“Five to 10 years from now, they could shut us down and use slave labor to do my job,” said Akin. “To me, that’s treason. What happens if we have a war with China and they use our factory to make engines for fighter planes to down Americans. We don’t know what the future holds. That would be really treasonous.”

Denouncing the establishment in Washington for serving the transnational corporations and multinational organizations--like the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary fund--is one of the themes that resonates most with crowds of his supporters from Columbia, Ga., to Buffalo, N.Y., to Memphis, Tenn.

But it is only one of several pressure points that Buchanan manipulates expertly during each stump speech. Others such points include:

* Dismay over the moral decline of society and the concern that public schools are a major contributor.

* Outrage over legal abortions.

* Desperation about stagnant wages and declining job opportunities.

* Fear about immigration.

* Anxiety among some whites that blacks and other minorities are getting special treatment in society.

* Frustration over paying taxes that fund government activities that his supporters dislike.

Whether or not Buchanan’s prescriptions have any hope of relieving these pains, his supporters say they feel better having someone who speaks with authority represent their views and get so much publicity doing it.

“We’re scared to say what we think some of the real problems are in this country for fear of being called a racist or extremist,” said Vince Thompson, a former College Democrats president who became a Republican after becoming an account manager for a medical sales company. “Pat says it for us.

“He’s giving the people a podium they can stand on. We may lose but this is how we feel, and it feels good to have our feelings aired. What Pat is doing is showing how divided we really are --as a nation--and giving a voice to the silent majority--the white population that works too hard to have time to be politically active.”

Buchanan has also capitalized on the local grievances.

Speaking to Cuban-Americans in Miami’s Little Havana, Buchanan talked tough about Castro.

“We don’t now what the word ‘quit’ means in the Buchanan campaign,” he said. “In that way, we’re like the good Cuban-American people of Miami. They don’t quit battling Fidel Castro, simply because Fidel Castro is not gone yet.”

“We get that Republican nomination,” he added, off the cuff, “and by the end of my first term, Fidel Castro is gone.”

While in South Carolina he defended the Confederate flag and the all-male corps at The Citadel, pledging that he would fight against those who say that “we’ve got to surrender our traditions.”

While Buchanan’s positions on immigration were just footnotes in many of his stops, in Arizona he suddenly hit heavy on the issue--particularly on one 250-mile swing south toward the Mexican border. By South Carolina, immigration was barely mentioned again. He promises to hammer away again at his proposal to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border when he stumps in California.

Even without these special flourishes, his basic stump speech is a masterful tapestry of resentment, weaving together anger over immigration with accusations that Washington sold out American workers by signing the GATT and NAFTA trade agreements, and denunciations of roles Wall Street and transnational corporations have played in destroying America’s manufacturing base. Then he often transitions into the growing dominance of “new world order” groups like the United Nations and the World Bank that want the United States to “end up like Gulliver tied down on the beach.”

The heart of the section decrying America’s loss of sovereignty is usually the tale of soldier Michael New, a home-schooled young Texan who was court-martialed Jan. 24 after he refused to accept foreign command in a United Nations operation. He wouldn’t wear a U.N. helmet and insignia and go to Macedonia. Without fail, the crowds respond with jeers of outrage that turn to cheers of delight when Buchanan declares that New should not have been court-martialed, but his commander-in-chief, President Clinton, should be.

*

No full-length Buchanan speech is complete without a reference to the subversive role of the U.S. Education Department.

“We will give the money back to the states,” Buchanan told a crowd in Memphis, so “you don’t have some dingbat in sandals and beads at the Department of Education telling you how to educate your children.”

His supporters stand by him, no matter the odds.

“I know that there’s no hope,” said Susan Harper, 35, who stood in a freezing hangar in Baton Rouge Friday with the 14-year-old daughter she home-schools to hear Buchanan. “It does make me feel good that there are like-minded people.”

“He’s really winning,” said William Ingram, a retired lawyer who came out to show support for Buchanan in a parking lot earlier this week in Roswell, Ga. “He may not win the nomination. He’s winning the war and not the battle. He’s increasing the awareness of the public to his issues.”

Times staff writer Stephen Braun contributed to this story.