Conservative firebrand Patrick Buchanan reluctantly laid down his populist pitchfork Sunday night, declaring a truce with GOP leaders who spurned him but denying an outright endorsement to the party’s soon-to-be presidential nominee, Bob Dole.
In a speech that was more combative than conciliatory, the former commentator-candidate essentially assured the party establishment that he and his supporters would refrain from upsetting the nominating convention–but they are not going away.
Speaking to a sometimes-raucous crowd of about 1,500 religious and social conservatives in a city 30 miles north of the San Diego Convention Center, Buchanan quickly put the party on notice that the “Truce of San Diego” is temporary.
“Let us–at least for the next 10 weeks, nobles and knights, and yes, even peasants with pitchforks–suspend our battles with one another . . . in the name of a Republican victory,” Buchanan said. He referred to the medieval practice of suspending battles during the pre-Easter season of Lent and to his own motif of leading an army of peasants with pitchforks against the establishment.
Denied an opportunity to address the GOP convention itself, Buchanan, 57, delivered his speech at the conclusion of a three-hour celebration of himself called “The Man and The Movement: A Tribute to Patrick J. Buchanan.”
Held at an arts center, the somewhat quirky fete featured appearances by such noted conservatives as former Marine Col. Oliver North and Eagle Forum head Phyllis Schlafly.
The grand finale was Buchanan’s speech. And if it was, indeed, the speech Buchanan would have given on the floor of the convention center, it was clear why the party aristocracy didn’t want it delivered on prime-time television–or anywhere else, for that matter.
While it touched on all of Buchanan’s recurrent themes–strident opposition to abortion, the preservation of American sovereignty, the condemnation of corporate greed at the expense of workers and the protection of American borders–the nine-page speech amounted to a ringing, and sometimes plaintive, rebuke to the GOP establishment.
Indeed, Buchanan mentioned Dole’s name only once, and then only in passing. Pointing out that his dream of capturing the 1996 Republican presidential nomination was “not so wild a dream,” Buchanan said: “Had Lamar (Alexander) just run second in New Hampshire, instead of a narrow third, we now know Sen. Dole would have quit the race.”
But Dole didn’t quit, and, despite Buchanan’s victory over the former Kansas senator in the New Hampshire primary, the spunky but sparsely funded Buchanan campaign steadily lost steam in the weeks that followed. Buchanan garnered about 3 million votes during the primary season and brought about 157 delegates to the GOP convention.
Cobbling together a victory in the face of his defeat, Buchanan noted that despite the cold shoulder his party has turned toward him, “Before our eyes and before their eyes, this party is becoming the Buchanan party.”
Referring to the conservatives’ success at preserving many of their most cherished tenets in the party platform, Buchanan said, “Whole sections–the stand for life, protecting our borders, immigration reform, restoring our lost sovereignty, Putting America First–they are right out of the speeches we have been giving for 18 months.”
Having often accused Dole of “pirating” his ideas, Buchanan said, “Friends, there is so much of ours in that platform, that we’ve decided to ask (Republican National Committee Chairman) Haley Barbour for royalties.”
Though silenced by a GOP particularly anxious to avoid further contention over abortion, a defiant Buchanan said he and his wife Shelley will attend the convention.
“It is our party, too,” Buchanan said, bringing the crowd to its feet for the eighth time in a 40-minute speech. He expressed confidence that his movement’s “conservatism of the heart” ultimately will prevail in the Republican Party.
“America does not need a third party. America needs a fighting second party, a party that means what it says, and says what it means, that not only preaches but practices a conservatism of the heart–that looks out for all our people, but especially for those who have no one else to look out for them,” he said.
“Within this party, a new party is being born, even in this room tonight,” he told his supporters. “God willing, we will be there at its birth and one day, the stone the builders rejected shall become the cornerstone.”
