Buchanan Bolts to Reform Party

Patrick J. Buchanan, the passionate conservative who wrote scripts for Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, left them all behind Monday to attempt to hijack the party of Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura and, yes, even Donald Trump.

After briefly expressing “anguish and regret” about ending his lifelong membership in the Republican Party, Buchanan immediately began retooling his debt-ridden presidential candidacy--his third attempt at the White House--to appeal to the eclectic collection of voters who make up the Reform Party.

Rather than burrow in on what have been his GOP calling-card issues, opposition to abortion and liberal culture, Buchanan emphasized other “anti” views toward free trade, open immigration and U.S. involvement overseas, all red-meat issues for disaffected Reformers.

“Only the Reform Party offers the hope of a real debate and true choice for destinies for our country,” he told about 350 Republican supporters and new Reform Party recruits gathered in a hotel ballroom in this Washington, D.C., suburb where Buchanan has moved his expanded headquarters.

“You don’t know this peasant army,” he said, recalling the “peasants-with-pitchforks” imagery of his 1996 insurgent presidential campaign. “We have not yet begun to fight.”

Buchanan’s backers said he would relish using his rhetorical skills in a debate against Trump, a novice politico and flamboyant billionaire businessman. The only other candidate edging toward a Reform candidacy, Trump also discarded his Republican credentials Monday when he filed as a Reform Party member in New York. But his candidacy is still in its infancy and he has said he’ll only go for the presidency if he feels he “could win the election.”

“We hope to stage a series of debates and at this point it’s Buchanan versus Trump,” said Pat Choate, a former Reform Party vice presidential candidate who is backing Buchanan. “We want this to be a vigorous contest.”

Even as Buchanan attempted to shed one party’s agenda for another Monday, there was no mistaking the hyperbolic rhetoric coming from the podium: It was vintage Buchanan, the journalist turned GOP White House speech writer turned TV polemicist.

“This is our last chance to save our republic before she disappears into the godless New World Order that our elites are constructing in a betrayal of everything for which our Founding Fathers lived, fought and died,” he shouted.

Several Reform leaders at the announcement acknowledged their dislike of--or at least disinterest in--Buchanan’s views on God, abortion and the National Endowment for the Arts, at which he made a passing swipe. But since the Reform platform is silent on such issues, the leaders would be too, they said, even if Buchanan raised them.

Rather, these Reformers are attracted to Buchanan’s views on core economic and international issues as well as his strident support of campaign reform. Buchanan would end international trade agreements, transfer school and welfare funding to the states and further restrict political contributions.

They also seemed thrilled by the voter and media attention that Buchanan is sure to bring them, raising hopes for a party that has longed for its 1992 high, when it attracted 19% of the vote in the presidential election.

But while these Reformers were cooing over their new best friend Pat Buchanan, the Republicans he left behind had a more jaundiced view of his defection. Conventional wisdom says he will draw support from their party, but on Monday, the GOP perspective was good riddance to a candidate who wasn’t getting much traction in the polls or money for his campaign, which is $1.4 million in debt.

Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson, who had attempted to persuade Buchanan not to abandon the party, accused him Monday of having “drifted from its principles.” He alluded to Buchanan’s recent book suggesting that Adolf Hitler presented no serious threat to the United States in 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II. (Trump on Sunday called Buchanan a “Nazi lover,” and half a dozen protesters stood outside the Virginia hotel where Buchanan made his announcement Monday shouting, “No More Nazism.”)

Nicholson also quoted Buchanan’s mentor, Reagan, who once said: “A third party usually succeeds in electing the people it set out to oppose.”

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner who once urged Buchanan to stay, also joined in the GOP attack on his erstwhile colleague.

“Pat’s message was rejected by Republicans across America, so he is choosing to leave the party of Lincoln and Reagan,” Bush said in a statement released in Austin. “I am confident that the vast majority of conservatives will stay with the party that represents conservative ideals: the Republican Party.”

However, Donna Donovan, Reform leader from Connecticut, said Buchanan has been making the right moves to attract a broad group that might vote Reform in November 2000--or otherwise not vote at all. Still, she said, it is a long road to the Reform convention, which is scheduled for Long Beach in August. “Let the games begin,” she said.

This is the week that the various factions in the party were officially lining up behind a candidate:

Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, the party’s most prominent elected official, is backing Trump and is no fan of Buchanan’s conservative ideology. Choate says Perot, the Texas businessman and party founder, has been in a struggle with Ventura to control its direction. Perot has ruled out running himself, Choate said, and will likely back Buchanan.

As one Reform leader in the audience said, acknowledging the odd assortment of recruits and the fractiousness of the party: “The Reform Party strategy is to open the door and see what comes in.”