Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Buchanan revamps his presidential campaign and image by joining the Reform Party and making "racial reconciliation" a pet issue. But just how warm and fuzzy can the new Pat be?
Oct 25, 1999 | Pat Buchanan finally stopped waffling on his party preference Monday, formally announcing that he was tearing up his lifelong Republican Party membership card to pursue the Reform Party presidential nomination and its $13 million in federal matching funds.
"This decision was not made without anguish and regret," Buchanan told a room packed with reporters at the Doubletree Hotel, before dishing out anti-New World Order, anti-NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) red meat for his fans, as well as a bone of "racial reconciliation" to his new multi-ethnic Reform Party bedfellows.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties "have become nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey," Buchanan said. Both parties supported NAFTA and GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), "open borders and centralized power," most-favored-nation status for China, "the surrender of our national sovereignty to the World Trade Organization," "the illegal war on Serbia" and on and on.
Buchanan railed at GOP elites. "They have rearranged the primary schedules and rigged the game to protect the party favorites," Buchanan declared. "We choose not to play our assigned role in their sham election!" he insisted, pointing a final middle finger at the leaders of the Republican party on his way out the door.
But most of his speech was aimed at his new pals: "My friends, this year 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."
"Only the Reform Party offers the hope of a real debate and a true choice of destinies for our country," he said.
The heft of Buchanan's address indicated the common causes he shares with Reform Party animals and their suspicions of the "godless New World Order." He slammed International Monetary Fund "bailouts of deadbeat dictators," "cancerous trade deficits" and the erosion of the U.S. industrial base because of free trade policies like NAFTA. He dumped on the Internal Revenue Service, federal meddling in education and the Supreme Court.
Noting that isolationist is "one of the nicer things they call us," Buchanan said, "if they mean I intend to isolate America from the bloody territorial and ethnic wars of the new century, I plead guilty." He pledged to never send the U.S. military to fight "in a foreign war unless our country is attacked or our vital interests are imperiled."
Additionally, Buchanan sounded out a popular Reform party theme that hadn't previously seemed much of a priority by speaking out against the unregulated, unrestricted party cash known as "soft money," decrying how both Democrats and Republicans "write laws with lobbyists looking over their shoulders."
To giggles and guffaws, he cautioned United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan -- who has warned that the U.S. could lose its vote in the U.N. if our government continues to hold back from paying our U.N. dues -- saying, "I would give Mr. Kofi this word of advice: Sir, don't go there."
The fact that Buchanan, historically a notorious race- and Jew-baiter, would refer to Annan as "sir" indicated a new direction for the former CNN commentator -- one no doubt borne of necessity, as his new bedfellows include Dr. Lenora Fulani, an African-American socialist, and David Goldman, the Jewish chairman of the Reform Party of Florida. But Buchanan went even further than the "sir," offering an olive branch of "unity and reconciliation" that was mentioned time and time again by the moderate-to-left Reform activists who are watching Buchanan's leap into their pool with wary eyes.
"Of all the needs of this nation, none is greater for our peace and happiness than racial reconciliation," Buchanan said. While he reiterated his opposition to bilingual education, open immigration, and affirmative action, which he called "un-American devices that reward individuals based on what color they are, or what continent their kinfolk came from," Buchanan did so by framing his policies in a new "We are the world" leitmotif.
Thus, Buchanan argued, we need to be "English only" so we can be as one. We need to call a "time-out" on immigration because "it takes time to assimilate the 30 million who have come in the last 30 years ... to ease the downward pressure on workers' wages and to defeat the forces of separatism that threaten us and nations all over the world." "This land is our land," Buchanan said, stopping short of busting out Woody Guthrie's guitar. "It belongs to all of us, immigrant and native-born." The U.S., Buchanan went on, needs to "rediscover what brings us all together as one nation and one people ... Any man or woman from any continent or any country can be a good American. We know that ... It would be unpardonable ingratitude if we, the children of pioneers and patriots of every color, continent, and creed, lost this last best hope of earth, because we could not learn to live with one another, and could not learn to love one another."
"I think you will hear more" of that message in his speeches, allowed Buchanan's sister and senior advisor, Bay Buchanan.
Added Fulani, "His campaign and my office have had some discussions about the African-American community and the campaign."
"I've been talking with his campaign about what it means to build something new ... and already he's making new remarks. I think this move is an indication about creating something new in this country. I think we have a shot at dissipating some antagonism between black working-class people -- who I have particular relationship to -- and his relationship to the white working class. I want a shot at angry white men. If we're going to do something about race relations, we have to stop speaking with those who agree with us and build something with America," Fulani said.
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