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Jewish World Review March 29, 1999 /12 Nissan 5759

Don Feder

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Could the GOP stand Pat in 2000?

(JWR) ---- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com)
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- In the span of a week, 173 House Republicans voted against sending U.S. forces to Kosovo, the Senate endorsed a national missile defense and 91 Republicans in the House joined 197 Democrats to pass a bill limiting steel imports.

Pat Buchanan is smiling. It's shaping up to be a lock-and-load election in 2000.

Populist Pat, the economic nationalist and foe of the New World Order, is running hard for the Republican presidential nomination.

The pundits predict he won't make it to the playoffs. The smart money says he's too far to the right, too harsh and uncompromising, not presidential timber.

Pat's still smiling.

On the stump, Buchanan fires statistics. Since 1990, the United States has "poured $270 billion in hard currency into the communist Chinese regime." In 1996, Beijing had 30 M-9 and M-11 missiles targeted on Taiwan. Today, it has 200.

Due to illegal dumping, "three U.S. steel companies went bankrupt and 10,000 steelworkers lost their jobs last year." In the past quarter century, America has taken in 27 million immigrants.

Buchannan
Before writing off Buchanan, there are a few more stats the experts should consider. In 1992, he entered the race 10 weeks before the New Hampshire primary and took 27 percent of the vote against a Republican president.

Four years later, he won the caucuses in Alaska and Louisiana, came in second in Iowa and beat Bob Dole in New Hampshire.

It took a total mobilization for Wall Street to repulse this assault from Main Street. South Carolina's Republican governor took to the airwaves charging a Buchanan presidency would throw the state into recession. By then, the Buchanan campaign had run out of funds to reply in its own TV ads.

What makes Pat fun to cover, and gives an adrenaline rush to conservatives who've grown disillusioned with the party of Bush (Sr.) and Dole (Mr.), is his total candor and knack for turning a phrase.

This is an age when candidates get their positions from focus groups. Elizabeth Dole has decided she's "personally pro-life," which, says the National Review, means she's "glad she wasn't personally aborted."

Buchanan speaks from the heart. "To those who call me a protectionist, I say without apology: I will use the trade laws of this country and my authority as president to protect the jobs of our workers."

"Look," Pat recently told me over breakfast in Manchester, "the founder of my country wasn't Eamon De Valera or Otto von Bismarck (Buchanan is German-Irish), he was George Washington."

Buchanan decries multiculturalism, open borders, and our failure to teach American history, values and the English language to a generation of immigrants. "America is subdividing along racial and ethnic lines.

Hyphenated-Americanism has returned. ... Unless we go forward as one nation and one people, we're not going forward at all."

It doesn't take death threats to elicit an opinion from a man who's earned his livelihood as a commentator and served three administrations with distinction. China's military threat? "The great coming challenge to this country is communist China. ... This is the Rhineland."

What kind of Supreme Court justices would he appoint? "For me it's pro-life, constitutional conservatives. Period. Paragraph."

If they're rejected? "You keep sending them up. Let them have vacancies on the court. Break the other side's resistance." In other words, don't settle for a David Souter or an Anthony Kennedy.

What does he think of Clinton, in effect telling Slobodan Milosevic: Support peace or we'll kill you? "Kosovo is not America's war. Whose flag flies over Pristina is an issue that is not worth the bones of a single American pilot or U.S. Marine."

There's a reason a declining percentage of eligible voters cast ballots in each national election. Apathy plays a role. But it's also a function of the lies, equivocation, double-dealing and betrayals (not to mention the vacuous, issueless campaigns) that have become the hallmark of American politics.

Alienated voters may not enlist in the Buchanan Brigades. They'll tell pollsters that they're concerned about Pat's divisive rhetoric. Then, not a few will go to the polls and vote for him.

The loyalty Buchanan engenders can't be bought with patronage jobs. He'll rally Republicans who don't just want to win, but want to win for a reason.

And, win or not, with Buchanan in the race we'll have something to write about besides Elizabeth Dole's wardrobe and Steve Forbes' portfolio.


Up

3/17/99: Hollywood's party line in 1999
3/15/99: All bow, the court is in session
3/11/99: In praise of negative campaigning
3/09/99: Day-care study defies common sense
3/04/99: Starship Clinton orbits Kosovo
3/01/99: Public will blot out Broaddrick's accusation
2/25/99: Slick Hillie for Senate would be fun
2/23/99: Fascism in the name of fighting fascism
2/16/99: Was anything learned from the impeachment trial?
2/12/99: Educating the democratic voters of tomorrow
2/10/99: First Amendment doesn't apply to pro-life cause
2/08/99: Dems' triumph over Constitution complete
2/03/99: Blood of victims will drown out breakfast prayers
2/01/99: Without a home the heart knows no rest
1/29/99: Poster boy for term-limits
1/27/99: The 'so-what' defense in the City of Saints
1/25/99: Whose choice?
1/21/99: Censure worse than nothing
1/18/99: Words can`t dignify a dishonored presidency
1/13/99: Conservatism "with a heart" is conservatism without a head
1/11/99: If he isn't removed, watch out for Bill!
1/07/99: We can learn a lot from Teddy
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12/28/98: Zionist dream alive and well on West Bank
12/18/98: Impeach or abandon the Rule of Law
12/16/98: Clinton moves Middle East closer to war
12/14/98: Why we lost interest in the homeless
12/10/98: No place at table for conservatives
12/07/98: The day America lost its innocence
12/02/98: Pilgrims Pilloried in streets of Plymouth
11/30/98: Caribbean dogpatch not a good candidate for statehood
11/25/98: Will Vermont force gay marriage on the nation?
11/23/98: The ACLU wants your kids to get a love life
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11/16/98: "Pleasantville" a countercultural morality play
11/13/98: Ads are a tough sell for abortion
11/09/98: Why gutless Republicans lost
11/06/98: Historians against the Constitution
11/02/98: Loving response to a hateful conference
10/28/98: Professor Death will fit right in at Princeton
10/26/98: Plymouth caves to Pilgrim foes
10/21/98: On '98 election, keep a critical eye on polls
10/19/98: Clinton could yet be 'prosperity president'
10/16/98: Working families -- Dems love 'em (stuffed)
10/09/98: Majoring in 'weirdness'
10/07/98: Friends of Billy Clinton
9/29/98: Letter from ex-soldier highlights defense peril
9/28/98: Answering arguments against impeachment
9/18/98: The nation that doesn't exist
9/14/98: Bubba isn't the only one who should be ashamed
9/11/98: Resolution of Clinton crisis will define national character
9/09/98: We're still just wild about Harry
9/07/98: Mexican banditry didn't end with Pancho Villa
9/02/98: Clinton forgives us!
8/31/98: Ashcroft's plain talking touches responsive chord
8/26/98: Public opinion be damned
8/24/98: Why liberals condone Clinton's lies
8/20/98: Time to move on -- to impeachment
8/12/98: With Bubba in the sexual privacy zone
8/10/98: The truth won't set Clinton free
8/06/98: Truth about Hiroshima is incontrovertible
8/04/98: Clinton not the first hollow president
7/30/98: "Small Soldiers" -- a fractured Vietnam allegory
7/27/98: Crime wave hits hometown
7/22/98: Love in an Internet fishbowl
7/20/98: Ads bring ex-gay movement out of closet
7/15/98: Brian and Amy -- the children of Roe
7/13/98: Why are we scared of obnoxious 'activists?'
7/6/98: Fonda still resists reality
7/1/98: New York blesses domestic partnerships
6/29/98: Teddy and Calvin stood for virtue
6/24/98: Will Clinton betray Taiwan?
6/22/98: Big tobacco? What about big casinos?
6/15/98: Religion -- God for what ails you
6/10/98: Planning Clinton's China itinery
6/8/98: Republicans' Custer offers advice
6/4/98: Oh, Dems Christian-bashers!
6/2/98: Goldwater did conservatives more harm than good
5/27/98: A Clinton-hater confesses
5/15/98: Giuliani's assault on marriage
5/13/98: Hillary knows what's best for everyone
5/11/98: To honor her would not be honorable
5/6/98: Conservative chasm: pragmatism vs. worship of marketplace
5/4/98: Anglo-saxon me
4/29/98: Needle exchange programs are assisted-suicide
4/27/98: Chretien's mission of mercy to Fidel
4/22/98: School-choice is a religious freedom issue
4/20/98: Corporate execs deliver body parts to Beijing
4/14/98: National sales tax --- looks better all the time
4/13/98: The U.N. sinister? Hey, where did that idea come from?
4/8/98: Unions fight workers rights in 226 campaign
3/30/98: Africa's leaders should apologize
3/25/98: GOP shouldn't look to media for advice
3/22/98: You should care about Clinton's 'private life'
3/19/98: Color-coded reading, product of obsessive minds
3/16/98: Amendment will end exile of G-d from our public lives
3/9/98: Havana will break your heart
3/2/98: Vouchers Terrify Teachers' Union
2/25/98: Presidential politics starts at a resort hotel
2/23/98: Hillary's support comes at a price
2/18/98: How many times must we say "no" to gay rights?
2/16/98: Enoch Powell spoke the truth on immigration
2/11/98: Bubba behaving badly
2/9/98: A conservative dissent on the flag-burning amendment
2/5/98: We get the leaders we deserve
2/2/98: Send a signal that could penetrate boardroom doors
1/27/98: State of the president: hollow rhetoric
1/25/98: For Monica's playmate, we have no one to blame but ourselves
1/22/98: At Yale, bet on yarmulke over gown
1/19/98: Commission tackles America's fastest-growing addiction, gambling
1/15/98: Capital punishment and the hard case: no exceptions for Karla Faye Tucker
1/12/98: Partial-birth abortion and the GOP's future: the "big tent" meets truth in advertising
1/8/98: IOLTA: the Left's latest scam to crawl into our pockets
1/5/98: Connect the dots to create a terrorist state
1/1/98: The Unacceptables of 1997: Long may they rave
12/28/97: Hypocrisy is a liberal survival mechanism
12/23/97: Chanukah is no laughing matter
12/22/97: No merry Christmas for persecuted Christians around the world
12/18/97: Bosnia, Haiti, and how not to conduct a foreign policy


©1999, Creators Syndicate