Militant--on Buchanan

[Ryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

/* Written 10:17 PM  Feb  8, 1996 by plink in igc:militant.news */
/* ---------- "960219-Buchanan wins in Louisiana" ---------- */
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Title: 960219-02--Ultrarightist Buchanan Wins Caucuses In Louisiana
                                                               {front page}
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from the Militant, vol.60/no.7                         February 19, 1996


BY NAOMI CRAINE
  Ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan scored a coup in
the first vote of the race for the Republican presidential
nomination. Buchanan won the February 6 Louisiana caucuses,
gaining 13 delegates to the Republican Party convention,
compared to eight for Sen. Phil Gramm. Most other major
contenders for the Republican nomination, including front-
runners Bob Dole and Steve Forbes, did not take part in the
contest.
  Before the vote, which was taken at 42 sites across the
state, Gramm had predicted an easy win, suggesting he might
even get all of the Louisiana delegates.
  "This wasn't a victory for a man - this was a victory for a
cause," Buchanan declared when the results came in. He said
the polling was a triumph of "a new conservatism that puts
the values of faith, family, and country first."
  Like in the 1992 campaign, Buchanan, a longtime commentator
and speechwriter for the Nixon and Reagan administrations,
has been putting forward a fascist program through the
platform of the Republican primaries. Even more than last
time around, Buchanan, a millionaire, has sought to appeal to
workers, farmers, and "the little man." He speaks of "the
steadily declining real wages of working men and women in
this country. The ones who produce things and manufacture
things and work on assembly lines and work in small
plants...."
  Buchanan's central theme is the chauvinist slogan "America
First." In the name of "protecting American jobs" he rails
against the North American Free Trade Agreement. He calls for
special tariffs on Japanese and Chinese imports.
  He takes a particularly vicious stance toward immigrants,
calling for building a 70-mile fence and deploying troops
along the Mexican border, denying citizenship to children of
undocumented immigrants, making English the official
language, and imposing a moratorium on most legal
immigration.
  Like other fascist-minded demagogues historically, Buchanan
uses antigovernment and even anticapitalist rhetoric. In a
speech at the Heritage Foundation at the end of January, for
instance, he charged a "judicial dictatorship" with being in
"active opposition to the wishes of the majority." He accused
the courts of protecting "criminals, atheists, homosexuals,
flag burners, illegal aliens - including terrorists -
convicts, and pornographers."
  Continuing his 1992 theme of waging a "cultural war,"
Buchanan stresses his opposition to abortion, affirmative
action, and busing for school desegregation, while supporting
prayer in the public schools. Answering a question on prayer
in schools he said, "Look, our Founding Fathers, if you had
told them that they could not pray in their schools and the
order came from London, you would have heard three little
words: Lock and load."
  Buchanan is not primarily out to win votes, nor was he four
years ago. He has set out to build a cadre of those committed
to his program and willing to act in the streets to carry it
out. He dubs his supporters the "Buchanan Brigades."
  In his speech to the Republican Party convention in 1992,
Buchanan pointed to how after anti-police rioting, National
Guard units in Los Angeles had taken back the city "block by
block, house by house." That's how the American people are
going to win the "cultural war," he said. Other Republican
politicians complained that the speech, which set the tone
for the convention and ran so far over schedule that it
knocked Ronald Reagan out of the prime time slot, hurt the
Republican Party. Buchanan had no apologies to offer.
  Commenting on the tone of a recent speech Buchanan gave to
the New Hampshire legislature, Republican state
representative Julie Brown, said, "It's just mean - like a
little Mussolini."
  While he is not about to get the Republican nomination,
Buchanan is serious in his campaign. The week before his
Louisiana win, he came in first in a straw poll of Alaska
Republicans and placed third in polls in New Hampshire, where
the first primary election will be held. He is building a
base regardless of how the vote totals continue to fall. And
he poses the only real alternative that can be put forward
within the capitalist system to the like-sounding Clinton and
Dole - a fascist alternative.


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