At Least It’s Not Scripted

Once upon a time, say two days ago, there was a Reform Party. Now it appears there are two, each claiming the mantle of legitimacy and each hungrily eyeing the $12.5 million in federal campaign funds the party is entitled to by virtue of its showing in the last national election.

Hard-liner Pat Buchanan, who abandoned the Republican Party because he thinks it has been taken over by a bunch of wimps indistinguishable from Democrats, is expected to be nominated by one of the Reform parties at its Long Beach convention, which opens today. But his opponents, who this week lost a nasty fight over delegate seating, aren’t surrendering. They plan their own convention and will probably name their own presidential candidate. And they promise to go to court to try to block Buchanan’s candidacy, but Buchanan appears to have the upper hand.

This week’s lead-in to the Reform convention(s) was also a modest reminder of what political meetings often used to be, before the major parties decided bland was better: lots of shouting, swearing and walkouts. As one Buchanan supporter put it, it was good old “smash-mouth football.” And that was just the warmup. The real campaign has yet to begin.

Truth to tell, the 2000 election is unlikely to be affected by anything the Reformists do. It was different in 1992, when Ross Perot with his flip charts and down-home talk attracted nearly 20 million voters to his mainly self-financed campaign, or even 1996, when he was the choice of 8 million Americans. But Perot is no longer a figure in the party, and the party remainder that Buchanan has taken over won’t be focusing much on the fiscal conservatism Perot preached. Buchanan is determined to put divisive social controversies like abortion and homosexuality, which Perot’s party avoided, at the center of political discussion. With more than $12 million likely to come Buchanan’s way, he’ll have a big megaphone.