LATE ON THE NIGHT OF JULY 27, Pat and Shelly Buchanan were getting ready to go see Indepenence Day when they found a message from Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour on their answering machine. Reached at home, Barbour informed Buchanan that his speaking duties at next week’s Republican convention would consist of one soundbite, to be inserted in a five-minute ” other candidates” video. After weeks of veiled hints and open warnings from Barbour and other GOP higher-ups that Buchanan would be excluded from a key role in the San Diego festivities, the message was plain enough. And it got plainer on Sunday. When Bay Buchanan, the candidate’s sister and campaign manager, phoned someone she describes as “one of the adults in the Dole campaign,” she was told that no one was available to talk to her.
The next day, Bay Buchanan denounced the offer as “an affront.” Two days after that, her brother was standing before a hundred reporters in Washington’s Hyatt Regency to explain his plans. Buchanan opened with a few conciliatory remarks. He had planned to offer a list of platform suggestions long before “the little contretemps of the last couple of days.” Aside from an embrace of the flat tax, these were largely the ideas — protectionism, opposition to immigration, uncompromising opposition to abortion, deep suspicion of foreign aid — that were the centerpiece of his failed primary effort.
In putting such a list forward, he said: “These are not take-it-or-leave-it proposals; they are ideas which will emphasize the difference between the Republican party and Bill Clinton.” But Buchanan does have takeit-or- leave-it proposals, and senior aides happily fill in the blanks. He insists that Republicans purge from the platform all language referring to abortion as “a matter of conscience” — because “it’s not: it’s a matter of right and wrong” — and denouncing “hatred and bigotry” — because “that should go without saying.” He further insists that Dole name a pro-life running mate, and that the convention’s tone not be set by pro-choice governors Weld, Whitman, and Wilson.
And in the give-and-take with reporters that followed his remarks, Buchanan was more combative. “I am more committed to these ideas and issues,” he said, “than I am to any party label.” There seems little doubt what Buchanan is hinting at: If he doesn’t get sufficient respect from the Dole camp, he’ll try to take the 3.1 million votes that were cast for him in the primaries and bolt the Republican party. Buchanan claims he’ll take a “wait-and-see” attitude towards the convention. If this is a bluff, it’s a bluff that’s going to be called. He’s planning to address his delegates and supporters from a rented hall in Escondido, California, on Sunday, August 11, the night before the convention begins. By that time, Dole has said, the vice- presidential nominee will have been picked and the platform settled. If it’s Colin Powell? Then Buchanan will, his aides say, definitely bolt.
Obviously, whatever votes Buchanan might get in November will come out of Dole’s hide, which means a Buchanan candidacy could be fatal. But are those 3. 1 million votes Buchanan’s to take? Quite possibly, if we are to trust the results of a questionnaire the Buchanan campaign mailed to 130,000 supporters in the wake of the primaries. Of 30,000 responses, Buchanan said, two-thirds urged him to go to the convention with an open mind and decide there whether to endorse Dole. Twelve percent favored an immediate endorsement, and 22 percent urged Buchanan to announce as a third-party candidate.
And Buchanan has a vehicle for getting on the ballot: the U.S. Taxpayers party, run by conservative activist Howard Phillips. Phillips has been suggesting that Buchanan make a third-party run since 1986 and renewed the invitation at a dinner in May. The Taxpayers party is an umbrella organization. It and its affliates — including the American Independent party in California, the Independent American party in Nevada, and the Constitution party in Pennsylvania — already appear on 23 state ballots, are awaiting final certification on 9 more, and are “very likely,” according to a spokesman, to appear on 8 more still. Phillips’s name appears as a place- holder on the ballots.
The Taxpayers party is holding its own gathering the weekend after the Republicans, in Coronado, across the bay from GOP headquarters in San Diego. Buchanan has been invited to address the group. “It’s my hope,” says Phillips, “that if the GOP convention has been unsatisfactory he’ll cross over the bridge and accept our nomination.” Senior Buchanan officials pointedly decline to rule it out; indeed, voices within the Buchanan camp argue that Dole is trailing so badly no one will blame Buchanan four years from now for a Dole loss.
The Dole campaign has been spoiling for a fight with Buchanan for weeks now — as a way of showing that the Republican party under Dole will not repeat the “mistakes” of the 1992 convention, of which Pat Buchanan’s fiery “culture war” speech has become the symbol. “If he wants to be our Sister Souljah, let him,” an unnamed Dole aide told reporters in July. But when Bill Clinton used his attack on Sister Souljah to declare his independence from Jesse Jackson, he made his point and then brought the party back together. Jackson was invited to address the Democratic convention. Dole, by contrast, is putting Buchanan in a position where, if he doesn’t attempt to wreck the Dole campaign, he loses face.
The Buchananites think that’s not only selling them short, but also bad politics: “If they think Bush lost because he was too far to the right,” says a senior Buchanan aide, “they can’t read polls.” He has a point: The closest Bush came to Clinton in the late stage of the campaign was immediately following the opening night of the convention, when Buchanan and Reagan spoke. As Buchananires like to point out, John Chancellor described the speech as ” excellent,” David Brinkley as “outstandingly good.” The Houston Chronicle reported a ten-point bounce for Bush after the convention’s first night. The Dole campaign would have a point if it argued that a drumbeat of negative press coverage damaged Republicans in the after-math of Houston; but the belief that Pat Buchanan’s 1992 speech drove voters away all by itself is not the open-and-shut case the Dole campaign thinks it is.
Those close to Dole say the campaign is not taking the Buchanan threat seriously at all. “He’s too smart to bolt the party,” says one Dole adviser. ” We’re not going to elect an independent president. And where does that end Pat up for 2000? In a fringe group with Howard Phillips. He’s much too smart to fight the last war. He’ll be smart enough to see this convention as an opportunity to solve his own problems.”
What does the Dole campaign want from Pat Buchanan? For him to keep on doing exactly what he’s doing: playing the radical, so that Dole can present himself as a moderate within the party. Even if Buchanan doesn’t peel off a huge chunk of the Republican base, the Dole strategy is a frivolous one. If Buchanan is as off-the-reservation as Dole portrays him, isn’t America better off voting for a party that has no such elements to contend with?
Buchanan’s “new conservatism of the heart” may be full of untested and even unconservative ideas, but it is certainly a viscerally felt thing for Pat Buchanan, and he may be willing to face a great deal — even ostracism or humiliation — in its service.
by Christopher Caldwell
