Two Distant Voices--Poles Apart

Declaring a “truce” with the GOP leadership, maverick conservative Patrick J. Buchanan called on all factions of “this disputatious party of ours” to join together to defeat President Clinton in the coming election.

“Let us, at least for the next 10 weeks, nobles and knights--and, yes, even peasants with pitchforks--suspend our battles with one another and join together in common cause to defeat Bill Clinton,” Buchanan said in a speech on the eve of the Republican National Convention. “It is time for a party truce in the name of a Republican victory.”

Buchanan announced his support for the Republican ticket in prepared remarks for a speech Sunday night. But the eight-page text contains one rather conspicuous omission: It never mentions the names of presumptive presidential nominee Bob Dole or his running mate, Jack Kemp.

Blocked from speaking at the San Diego convention by the GOP leadership, Buchanan gave a passionate speech to supporters 30 miles from the convention site, reiterating his populist call for a new Republican Party imbued with a “conservatism of the heart.”

Four years ago, Buchanan sent shock waves through the Republican convention with his powerful prime-time address on the “cultural war” gripping America.

After then-President Bush lost the election, many Republicans grumbled that that speech--and their failure to muzzle Buchanan--contributed to that defeat.

“The perception was that it was far too harsh and it was a big mistake,” said Craig Fuller, Bush’s former chief of staff. “I have not aligned myself with that view, but we live in a world where it’s perception that counts. People planning this convention hoped to avoid the situation where a perception like that was created around Pat’s speech.”

This time around, the GOP establishment and standard-bearer Dole did everything possible to keep Buchanan and his resonating rhetoric as far from center stage as possible, and organizers have denied him an opportunity to speak directly to this year’s convention.

But Buchanan could not be silenced that easily. In fact, his speech-in-exile was expected to receive more attention coming on the eve of the convention than whatever he would have said to the delegates in the five-minute videotaped message that had been offered by convention organizers, according to many political commentators.

“It is not just their party; it is our party too,” Buchanan said in his prepared text, explaining his decision to stay in the GOP instead of breaking off and running under the banner of a new party. “America does not need a third party. America needs a fighting second party, a party that means what it says and says what it means, that not only preaches, but practices, a conservatism of the heart.”

Echoing a major theme of his campaign, Buchanan attacked corporate greed and recent trade policies--the most recent of which are the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade--that he says have sacrificed America’s sovereignty, driven good jobs out of the country and left behind families plagued by economic insecurity.

“Across America, company towns are becoming ghost towns,” Buchanan said at the California Center for the Arts, a performing arts center in Escondido, 30 miles north of San Diego. “Families are being uprooted, forced to move out, to find new work. You women who want to stay home with preschool children are being forced into the labor market to maintain the family standard of living.

“If not families, neighborhoods and communities, what is it we conservatives are trying to conserve?

“What are we doing to our own people?”

Buchanan, who surprisingly defeated Dole in the New Hampshire primary, only to watch his presidential hopes dwindle throughout the rest of the primary season, never formally gave up his bid for the presidency until Sunday.

Despite earlier talk about a walkout or protests by his delegates at the convention, Buchanan had struck a much more conciliatory tone in recent days.

Appearing before a crowd of several hundred people at an antiabortion prayer breakfast Saturday in Anaheim, Buchanan said he and his wife could be found at the convention this week, in their assigned seats in “row 149 seats Y and Z,” watching the podium action. “I’ll have the opera glasses on,” he joked.

Although Buchanan seemed to be reconciled to the GOP’s decision concerning a convention speech, his supporters said they felt snubbed by their own party.

“For them to close the doors on him is a slap in the face,” said Cheryl Conrad, 36, a homemaker who listened to Buchanan’s speech Saturday in Anaheim.

“I think it’s really unfortunate,” said Leslie Hanks, 45, who was on Buchanan’s steering committee in Colorado and is an alternate delegate for Buchanan at the convention. It is the Buchanan message that energizes, she said. “I think the country is just desperate for a politician who believes what they say and says what they believe,” Hanks said. “For too long the Republican Party has been blowing with the political winds and that makes the grass-roots people unsure of the direction of the party.”

Even though Buchanan has not been given a speaking role at this convention, he is much better represented among the delegates than last time around. Four years ago at the GOP convention in Houston, he had only 18 delegates. This time, he has 141. Although the numbers may seem insignificant compared to Dole’s 1,477, the delegates say their party cannot afford to ignore them.

Buchanan and his supporters have already declared victory in the fight concerning the party platform, which drafters completed last week. At the insistence of Buchanan’s supporters and other antiabortion Republican groups, the platform maintains the party’s strong support of a proposed constitutional ban on abortion. Despite the efforts of abortion-rights supporters to alter that plank, their views were relegated to an appendix to the document.

“Because the Buchanan brigades would not compromise, and because we would not quit, the Republican Party remains tonight a pro-life party,” Buchanan said.

Their struggles to defend the party’s antiabortion stance, combat recent trade policies and to protect the country’s sovereignty were not for naught, he said. “Before our eyes, this party is becoming a Buchanan party,” he said.

Although Buchanan failed to parlay his win in New Hampshire into a nomination, he set the tone of the campaign, largely with his appeal to the millions of voters in America who are struggling to make it economically.

He attacked corporate greed and trade policies that he blamed for robbing America of its well-paid manufacturing jobs, declaring a revolt of the “peasants with pitchforks.”

Buchanan’s clear, colorful message throughout the spring accentuated what was seen by many as a vision vacuum in the Dole campaign.

Dole was taken by surprise by the popularity of Buchanan’s message and his surprise added to a perception that the GOP favorite was out of touch with the reality of their lives.

“I didn’t realize that jobs and trade and what makes America work would become a big issue in the last few days of this campaign,” Dole said after his New Hampshire loss in February.

Dole then hurried to incorporate the themes into his own speeches.

Despite his defeat, Buchanan made it clear that he does not intend to give up. While stopping short of announcing his intentions to run again, he hinted at the possibility. A video prepared for the Sunday event finished with the image of the White House and an allusion to another attempt at capturing it in 2000.