Freedom Writer - April 1996

On the road with Pat Buchanan

By Adele M. Stan

"We are on the verge of taking back our country as 
prelude to taking back the destiny of America," bellowed 
Patrick J. Buchanan at the victory celebration for 
his win in the New Hampshire Republican presidential 
primary. "And when we get there, my friends, we will 
only be obedient to one sovereign in America, and that 
is the sovereign of God Himself."

Unwilling to simply savor his one-point victory over 
Senate majority leader Robert Dole, the GOP's anointed 
front-runner, Buchanan then warned his troops to expect 
the worst from party leaders. "All the forces of the 
old order are gonna rally against us...," he said ominously. 
"And I'm tellin' the folks out in the country, they're 
gonna come after this campaign with everything they've 
got. Do not wait for orders from headquarters; mount 
up, everybody, and ride." And with that, Pat Buchanan, 
the former commentator, speechwriter, and current dark 
horse contender for the Republican nomination, declared 
war on his own party.

The next day, Buchanan suggested that he could take 
his share of the GOP's religious radicals, gun enthusiasts, 
and cultural purists out of the Republican tent, perhaps 
to support a Buchanan third-party run. "I can't bring 
my people back to the Republican party if their leader 
is under attack," he snapped in response to the charges 
of his rival, Senate majority leader Robert Dole, that 
Buchanan's us-versus-them worldview was too extreme 
for a man who would be the standard-bearer of the party 
of Lincoln. 

Though a long shot for the nomination, Buchanan doesn't 
need to win the top spot in order to alter the course 
of American political history. If he continues to finish 
strongly in states that are not winner-take-all, by 
the time of the Republican National Convention in San 
Diego this August, Buchanan will have enough delegates 
to buy himself  tremendous influence over the party 
platform and the selection of a vice presidential nominee. 
With a weak front-runner who is up against a raft of 
negative advertising by millionaire Malcolm "Steve" 
Forbes Jr., the quixotic presidential hopeful, coupled 
with polls showing a high level of voter ambivalence, 
the Republican Party is in no position to call Buchanan's 
bluff; it can't afford to lose Buchanan's brigades 
of zealous volunteers and motivated voters if it hopes 
to take the White House back from Bill Clinton.

For Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian 
Coalition, that scenario was apparently too awful to 
contemplate. Though he appears to be supporting Bob 
Dole, Reed is too savvy a political operator to underestimate 
the threat posed by the pundit provocateur, and the 
specter of a Buchanan third-party insurgency led him 
to publicly urge Dole to can his attacks on Buchanan, 
according to Fred Barnes, editor of the _Weekly_Standard_, 
a conservative journal.

When the attacks eased up, Buchanan found another reason 
to threaten to bolt — abortion, especially if an attempt 
is made to eliminate the anti-abortion plank of the 
party platform in San Diego. "Bob Dole is not gonna 
stand up and fight Pat Buchanan to take that out of 
the platform now with our enormous support, otherwise, 
there would be a walk-out at the convention," Buchanan 
told Tina Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press." "He would 
split the party. You would probably have embryonic 
right-to-life parties all over America."

What Buchanan wasn't saying, but what party leaders 
no doubt know, is that those "embryonic" parties already 
exist as state affiliates of Howard Phillips' United 
States Taxpayer Party, which is planning to hold its 
national convention in San Diego, starting the day 
before the Republicans close their shop. Phillips, 
a former colleague of Buchanan's from their days in 
the Nixon White House and one of the creators of Jerry 
Falwell's Moral Majority, is currently working to get 
ballot lines for his party in all 50 states; in '92 
he managed to do it in 21.

Phillips has already expressed his desire to pick up 
Buchanan as his candidate. If granted the GOP nomination, 
Buchanan has said that he would still seek the nomination 
of Phillips' party, along with Ross Perot's, which 
Buchanan says belong "in an enlarged Republican Party." 
But if Buchanan wanted to walk his delegates out of 
the Republican convention, they'd only have to saunter 
a few blocks if they want to throw in all the way with 
Phillips, who sent Randall Terry, founder of the radical 
anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, on an 18-city 
organizing tour for the Taxpayers Party last summer. 


Last year, Howard Phillips suggested in his "Issues 
and Strategies Bulletin" that Buchanan prepare for 
a third-party run by thinking about taking on a wealthy 
running mate who could spend his personal wealth on 
a campaign. Buchanan put together a panel of wealthy 
advisors and donors to right-wing causes that includes 
W. Grover Coors of the beer-brewing family; Thomas 
Monaghan, chairman and CEO of Domino's Pizza; and Roger 
Milliken, a textiles magnate and longtime member of 
the John Birch Society who, according to _The_New_York_
Times_, has already supplied the Buchanan effort with 
$1.8 million in donations to the political arm of Buchanan's 
foundation, American Cause. 

When asked about the role of these advisors, the candidate's 
sister and campaign manager, Angela "Bay" Buchanan, 
explained, "Well, they have helped us raise money. 
Occasionally they'll call us and give us some advice. 
We talk to them about different things, especially 
if it's in their states. But they are not active, daily 
members of the effort." _The_Times_ calls Milliken 
"one of the leaders of the Buchanan campaign." 

By staying in the GOP but threatening to go, Buchanan 
effectively keeps party leaders bowing to the right, 
though the party's strength actually lies somewhere 
in the political middle. With his no-exceptions anti-abortion 
stance and promises to return God to the public schools, 
Buchanan's presence on the Republican presidential 
landscape has already shown up fissures in the Christian 
right, where purists such as Focus on the Family founder 
James Dobson, Ph.D., have taken issue with Ralph Reed's 
apparent willingness to compromise on a candidate like 
Dole, whose "right-to-life" record is less than perfect 
by the standards of right-wing religious leaders. 

Early in his campaign, Buchanan appointed Donald Wildmon, 
founder of the American Familiy Association of Tupelo, 
Mississippi, national co-chair of his campaign. Wildmon 
first rose to national prominence as the Christian 
right's point man in the war against the National Endowment 
for the Arts. The day after his big win in New Hampshire, 
Buchanan secured the endorsement of Phyllis Schlafly, 
president of the Eagle Forum, an organization closely 
allied with the Christian right.

Whether he stays with the Grand Old Party or goes, 
Buchanan's impact on the national debate over such 
emotional issues as school prayer, abortion and race 
will far outlast the 1996 presidential contest, as 
he shatters each constituency to which he appeals, 
picking up the shards most useful to him in a political 
game that gives new meaning to the phrase "cut and 
run."

The untold story of Pat Buchanan's success in the early 
contests for the Republican nomination has been his 
challenge to the leadership of the Christian Coalition's 
Ralph Reed, whose strategy for implementing the Coalition's 
theocratic agenda has hinged on the organization of 
grassroots activists trained to take over the infrastructure 
of the Republican Party at the local level, which he's 
done with alarming success in some 31 states. But while 
Reed appears to have taken up with Dole, his well-organized 
ground troops find themselves seduced by Buchanan's 
consistent anti-abortion message and railings against 
the U.N., the global economy and secular humanism, 
allowing the dark horse to pirate the machinery of 
Reed's own operation. Having lost control of a sizeable 
contingent of his own rank-and-file, Reed's carefully 
accrued power in what he's helped define as God's Own 
Party is at risk if it's discovered he can no longer 
deliver the votes he promises.

Perhaps the best illustration of the willingness of 
Buchananites to defy both Republican and Christian 
Coalition leadership rests with the fate of the eight 
delegates won by Texas Senator Phil Gramm in the Louisiana 
caucuses before he quit the race after his dismal nine-percent 
showing in Iowa. Though Gramm went on to endorse Dole, 
the Texan's embrace of the Senate majority leader had 
little effect on the delegates whom the Louisianans 
had elected to represent him at the Republican National 
Convention. 

According to a memo to Pat Buchanan obtained by this 
writer for IFAS, Gramm's Louisiana delegates, led by 
Dan Perkins, the Christian Coalition's director for 
Louisiana's fifth Congressional district, met in a 
closed four-hour deliberation and unanimously opted 
to get behind Buchanan, deciding that, "to be more 
effective, each Congressional District Delegation would 
announce its commitment [to Buchanan] at separate times 
and places over the next few weeks," Perkins wrote. 
In the memo, he also said he'd be trying to convince 
Gramm delegates in other states to fall in behind Buchanan. 
(An additional nine Louisiana delegates were awarded 
to the winner of the state's Super Tuesday primary.) 


At Buchanan campaign headquarters in a storefront abutting 
a Midas Muffler shop in Des Moines, self-described 
Christian Coalition activist Tom McMillan was hard 
at work two days before the caucuses, setting up a 
phone bank staffed by the 40 or so people he'd brought 
down from neighboring Michigan to get out the Iowa 
vote. Just blocks away, Michigan Christian Coalition 
organizer Marlene Elwell, who is widely credited with 
Christian Coalition president Pat Robertson's win in 
Iowa during the 1988 presidential caucuses, was toiling 
for Dole, along with top Coalition figures Steve Sheffler 
and Ione Dilley, who heads the Iowa Christian Coalition. 
Elwell had actually started out working for Buchanan 
in this contest, but later left the campaign. Tom McMillan 
and Marlene Elwell have worked together "on a whole 
bunch of things," according to Elwell, but McMillan 
took issue with Elwell's change of heart.

"I don't think that Dole is a pro-life candidate, quite 
frankly," McMillan explained. "He's voted for pro-abortion 
judges, he's supported fetal farming — fetal tissue 
research — and he said he'd take a pro-abortion vice 
president."

On February 12, the glee was palpable at the Holiday 
Inn where the Buchanan forces convened as the caucus 
results showed the former speechwriter hot on the heels 
of the Republican Party's anointed front-runner; Dole 
squeaked out  a win with only 26 percent of the vote, 
while Buchanan took 23 percent. Over at the Dole victory 
party in the plush Hotel Fort Des Moines, the atmosphere 
was more subdued. There we found the Christian Coalition's 
Marlene Elwell, cup of wine in hand, and asked her 
to reflect on the results.

Elwell was quick to take credit for both Dole's win 
and  Buchanan's second place, explaining that she "laid 
the foundation" for Buchanan's success. "Somebody just 
asked me how it felt to have two winners," she said 
with a smile. If Steve Forbes hadn't entered the race, 
she asserted, she would have stuck with Buchanan. "So 
our whole goal was to really stop Forbes. And we were 
successful in that." Indeed, Forbes made some waves 
when he accused the Christian Coalition of actively 
working against him in Iowa. "See, in the end," Elwell 
said, "I don't believe Pat Buchanan can be the nominee. 
And so, therefore, what you have to do is get behind 
a candidate that you feel can beat Bill Clinton, and 
that's really what this was about."

"You know, there's [sic] leaders across the country 
in different organizations who make decisions for different 
reasons," said the candidate's sister and campaign 
manager, Bay Buchanan, when asked at her brother's 
"victory  party" in Des Moines about Elwell and other 
Coalition leaders lining up behind Dole. "I'm not gonna 
sit here and explain it. But I know that the grassroots 
organizations that they represent are now moving in 
large numbers to Pat Buchanan. That's how you win elections 
— not by a name or two, but by the people who get out 
and help you and vote for you, and that's what we've 
got. So, what the leaders are doing and why they're 
doing it, I don't need to have a lot of time to figure 
out. I just want to make sure that the people are comin' 
our way." 

And they are. In Iowa, where the Christian right was 
believed to have accounted for 35 percent of the caucus 
vote, 42 percent of caucus-goers who voted for Buchanan 
identified themselves as members of the Religious Right, 
according to a survey by Voter News Service, as compared 
to 19 percent of Dole's.

Even in New Hampshire, where the Religious Right accounted 
for 15 percent of primary voters, Buchanan relied on 
local Christian Coalition activists like Shelly Uscinski 
to get out the vote. Uscinski, who conducts seminars 
for the Christian Coalition on how to win election 
to local office, is a Buchanan delegate and plans to 
attend the Republican National Convention. At Buchanan's 
victory party there, Paul Nagy, the Coalition's northeast 
regional director, played sax with the band.

Soon after Buchanan's New Hampshire triumph, his momentum 
with the less radical elements of his support began 
to dwindle as revelations of links between some of 
his campaign organizers and right-wing extremist figures 
and organizations such as David Duke and the Christian 
Identity movement sank into the public consciousness. 
When he suffered a defeat in South Carolina, where 
he expected to do well because of support from the 
Christian right and rhetoric calculated to appeal to 
segregationists, he complained bitterly to Tim Russert 
on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the Christian Coalition 
leadership had "moved en masse behind Bob Dole," despite 
the fact that Dole's pro-life record was less than 
pure.

The Christian right, from which Pat Buchanan draws 
a sizeable chunk of his support, is largely the creation 
of three key figures from the old "New Right" of the 
Reagan era — Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage 
Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation; Richard 
Viguerie, the direct-mail wizard and message maven 
responsible for the success of numerous right-wing 
candidates and ventures; and Howard Phillips, founder 
of the Conservative Caucus and the United States Taxpayers 
Party. The three remain in close touch, according to 
Viguerie.

As anti-abortion zealot Howard Phillips holds the threat 
of a third-party Buchanan run over the heads of party 
leaders, Paul Weyrich has remained out of the public 
eye during the race, except for his appearance at a 
press conference by right-wing leaders last winter 
that was designed to scare Gen. Colin Powell, a pro-choice, 
self-described Rockefeller Republican, out of running. 
(Shortly after the press conference, Powell bowed out 
of the running.) Weyrich remains, however, a close 
adviser to Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson of the Christian 
Coalition.

Richard Viguerie, meanwhile, has dropped hints of an 
alliance with Steve Forbes, though he makes it a policy 
not to discuss current clients. Last summer, before 
anybody knew who Forbes was, Viguerie predicted Forbes' 
entrance into the race, saying "I think by January 
1, he could be ahead of Gramm, and in second place." 
Which is exactly what happened, although, of course 
the lead didn't hold. Viguerie explained that there 
were two bases "available to the Republicans that are 
going unspoken for." One, he explained, consists of 
the "social conservatives," a.k.a. the Christian right, 
and the other is the economic supply-siders. "So, Forbes 
will come in on that side," he said. 

Forbes' insistence on staying in the race, outspending 
all opposition, is widely regarded as a problem for 
Dole and a boon for Buchanan. Forbes' style of televisions 
ads attacking Dole seems to be derived from the campaigns 
of right-wing Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, 
a long-time client of Richard Viguerie. At Forbes' 
side at nearly every campaign stop has been retired 
New Hampshire Senator Gordon Humphrey, a former airline 
pilot who was catapulted onto the political stage via 
the efforts of Viguerie and Phillips.

While Forbes keeps Dole's support soft with his blitz 
of attack-ads, and Buchanan pushes the Republicans 
and their front-runner further to the right, it's hard 
not to wonder if the old boys of the New Right aren't 
about to finally have their way with the Grand Old 
Party, which they've been plotting to take over since 
they helped Barry Goldwater grab the 1964 nomination. 
At the rally against gay marriage in Des Moines, we 
asked Christian right figure Rev. Lou Sheldon about 
the possibility of a brokered Republican convention 
in San Diego next summer. "I don't think it will come 
to that," he said with a smile. "I think Dole will 
come to us."

On CBS's "Face the Nation" Buchanan said, "Let me tell 
you this. If Bob Dole tries to put a Rockefeller Republican 
in line for the presidency who is pro-choice on abortion, 
he's gonna have the fight of his life at his own convention...and 
I may be in the middle of the dust-up."

Strap on your six-guns, boys and girls; we're going 
to settle this thing in San Diego.

_Adele_M._Stan_is_a_freelance_journalist._Barry_Morgan_
Thomas_is_an_independent_photojournalist._Stan_and_
Thomas_traveled_to_Iowa_and_New_Hampshire_to_cover_
this_story_for__Freedom_Writer_Magazine_._

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