Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
Most analysts think a run by Buchanan under the Reform Party banner would hurt Bush more than Gore. It's time to think again.
Sep 15, 1999 | In the last piece I wrote for Salon News in late June, "Will Pat Buchanan and Jesse Ventura join forces?" I confidently predicted that, despite their common reputation as critics of the political establishment, Buchanan would not abandon the GOP race to run for the Reform Party's presidential nomination; and even if he did, Ventura would not support him.
Well, maybe I'll still be half-right. While Buchanan has all but declared that he's jumping over to the Reform race, Ventura still seems to be resisting an alliance. But the Minnesota governor may yet have to reconcile himself to Pitchfork Pat's juggernaut -- despite his dislike of Buchanan's social and religious views.
If that happens, I'll be eating a second helping of crow. So much for journalistic predictions.
There's still, of course, a tiny chance that Buchanan will stop short of making the final break with the party that nurtured him and that he has served loyally under Presidents Reagan and Nixon. But after watching him tell Tim Russert on Sunday's "Meet the Press" that he won't endorse the Republican nominee, that the GOP has become "a Xerox copy" of the Democratic Party and that he is leaning "strongly" in the direction of jumping into the Reform ring, most observers have concluded that he has indeed made the necessary psychological leap already.
For Buchanan, this switch must be nearly as difficult as if he were to leave the Catholic Church. But it's possible that, like many people nearing retirement age, he feels he has only one last chance to make his mark. Some older people feel liberated from social pressures that shackle their juniors, and Buchanan may be one of them.
The amazing thing is that he and his inner circle of advisors and funders think he actually can win. As my colleague Doug Ireland and I reported in the Nation recently, two days after the Republican straw poll in Ames, Iowa, the entire team met at Buchanan's home to discuss Pat's future.
With the exception of his wife, Shelley, who said nothing, everyone favored a switch to Reform. Their reasoning makes sense: With billionaire Steve Forbes and activist Gary Bauer soaking up the social conservative vote, Buchanan has little chance of breaking through in the early GOP primaries as he did in 1992 and 1996.
By contrast, the Reform Party nomination is wide open, and the party's candidate will get $12.6 million in public funds for the general election, along with a shot at the presidential debates. Combine disaffected conservatives with Perot independents, Reagan Democrats and trade-unionists (like the busloads of Teamsters who showed up in Ames to vote for Pat) and Buchanan sees himself getting at least one-third of the vote under this scenario.
Can he be stopped by the Ventura forces? Will Perot let Buchanan step into his shoes? No and yes are the quick answers. Ventura has not hidden his dislike of Buchanan's right-wing politics (though he, like everyone else in this country, seems to have decided that there's no need to go into the repulsive details), going so far as to call him a "retread" who couldn't win his own party's nomination.
But Ventura, and all the other self-proclaimed centrists in the Reform Party, can't prevent Buchanan from winning the party's nomination without a stronger candidate who can beat him. And none is in sight.
Lowell Weicker spent much of the summer ruminating about running while noting publicly that he disagreed with many Reformers on such issues as free trade (he's for it), term limits (against) and guns (he'd ban them).
He's lousy on campaign finance reform, another concern close to Reformers' hearts, because of a mistaken belief that it can't be done without tampering with the First Amendment. It's not for nothing that one top Ventura operative told me in August that Weicker's "not doing anything to make me think he'd be a strong candidate for the Reform Party."
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