Pat Buchanan and Bill Ravotti talk with the media Monday afternoon before joining donors at a fund-raising luncheon at the Rivers Club. (Pittsburgh, PA) Photo by: Steven Adams, Tribune-Review 08/02/99 - CNN SUNDAY [8/1] - Gene Randall, Bruce Morton   PAT BUCHANAN LOOKS AHEAD TO THE STRAW POLL GENE RANDALL, CNN ANCHOR: ... As is the case with almost everyone else in the GOP field, Pat Buchanan has his sights set on Iowa's Republican straw poll, two weeks away. CNN's Bruce Morton has our report. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PAT BUCHANAN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You got my license? Why don't I drive this thing? What do you think? BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): And he did drive the 1973 Excalibur, an American car, he'd want you to know, as grand marshall of Ladora, Iowa's annual parade. QUESTION: Are you enjoying yourself? BUCHANAN: My wife, Shelley -- pleasure. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, Shelly. Good to meet you. Hi, folks. BUCHANAN: We'll see you out at the picnic. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where did you pick up these characters? BUCHANAN: They're hitchhikers. MORTON: He's a candidate who enjoys campaigning -- after the parade, a picnic. Lindsey Zimmerman (ph), the queen of Iowa Country, is for him. LINDSEY ZIMMERMAN, IOWA COUNTY RESIDENT: Hi. BUCHANAN: How are you? Good to see you. ZIMMERMAN: Yes, how re you? MORTON: You're the queen? ZIMMERMAN: Oh, yes. MORTON: The queen's mom is for him, too. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody that I've talked to seems to be thinking that he's a lot stronger than people in the nation seem to think he is right now... MORTON: ...When the speeches start, Buchanan stresses what he calls an America-first trading policy, which farmers anxious for more exports like, tough policy towards China. BUCHANAN: I will bring in these Chinese communist leaders who point missiles at us and persecute Christians, and I will tell them, listen fellas, you've got a different American sitting in this Oval Office. You either build down those missiles, you stop persecuting Christians, and you start buying the goods of the United States of America with that trade surplus we're giving you or you fellas will have sold your last pair of chopsticks in the United States of America. MORTON: Next stop, a cable TV show at a Baptist church. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today we have a special guest with us, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. MORTON: And then another picnic. He's just ahead of Elizabeth Dole, lots of candidates in Iowa these days. These are Republican events. Buchanan is a Republican but says his issues, trade, nationalism, anti-abortion, come first. BUCHANAN: And these are really the North Star of Pat Buchanan. And they're the ideas and issues I'm going to follow right down to the end, and if the Republican Party veers off and goes in another direction, it goes in that direction. I'm going straight ahead... 08/02/99 - CEDAR RAPIDS GAZETTE [8/1] - Ken Sullivan   BUCHANAN, DOLE BLAST POLICIES The meal was roast pork, baked beans, au gratin potatoes, soft drinks and ice cream, but the political menu was taxes, trade, education and farm policy last night when Patrick Buchanan and Elizabeth Dole appeared at a fund-raiser hosted by the Iowa County Republican Central Committee.    Both are candidates for the party's nomination for president next year and appeared within minutes of each other at the event held on the grounds of Kinze Manufacturing Co. And both worked into their messages complaints about the performance of President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, the leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president.    Buchanan claimed huge shortcomings in the administration's trade policies.     Noting that the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown from $6 billion to almost $60 billion in a decade, he said that is partly a result of China's understandable desire to become completely self-sufficient. But another factor was China's decision to impose a 100 percent tariff on pork imports, and the United States has not responded vigorously enough, Buchanan said. "I don't understand why Clinton and Gore are accepting this discrimination against American farmers and American workers," he said. "I think their China policy and trade policy are a mistake. I would tell the Chinese communists to stop pointing missiles at us, to stop persecuting Christians, to stop keeping out our products -- or they'd never sell another chopstick in the United States"... Buchanan also emphasized the importance of tax policy for family farms and advocated abolition of the inheritance tax for family farms and elimination of the capital gains tax on family farms.    "If present policies in Washington, D.C., continue," he predicted, "there are not going to be many family farms in the next 10 years. One reason is the globalist policies of Clinton and Gore. They've allowed the country to run up a trade deficit of $300 billion. They're sacrificing the American manufacturing worker and the American farmer in order to keep the global economy propped up." 07/28/99 - THE BOSTON GLOBE - AP - Jim Abrams   HOUSE VOTES IN FAVOR OF NORMAL TRADE WITH CHINA President Clinton's China policy survived a tough challenge when the House voted to approve his decision to grant China normal trade status for another year.    The 260-170 vote Tuesday to defeat a motion to reject that decision came after a boisterous debate in which China critics argued that a nation that spies on the United States and persecutes its own citizens does not deserve trade advantages. With the vote, the administration cleared an obstacle to its larger goal of concluding negotiations with Beijing on opening up China's markets as a condition to that country's admission into the World Trade Organization.    Clinton welcomed the vote, saying expanded trade "can help bring greater social change to China by spreading the tools, contacts and ideas that promote freedom."    He said he would pursue a WTO agreement "not as a favor to China but as a means of opening and reforming China's markets and holding China to the rules of the global trading system." Since 1980, both Democratic and Republican presidents have annually extended normal trade status formerly called most-favored-nation status and the vocal anti-China faction in Congress has never succeeded in overturning those decisions.    This year, however, opponents of normal trade came armed with allegations that China had stolen U.S. nuclear weapons secrets, tried to buy influence in U.S. elections, threatened Taiwan and stepped up persecution of its citizens. American members of the Falun Gong meditation sect held a silent vigil on the Capitol lawn to protest the arrest of its followers in China. "Whitewashing human rights abuses in the People's Republic of China is not in our interests or in the interests of the people of China," said Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., who led the investigations into suspected Chinese espionage. "This debate and this vote is not about tariff rates, it's about sending a signal to Beijing."    But despite the fallout over espionage and a trade deficit with China that is expected to go well over $60 billion this year, a majority of both Republicans and Democrats supported normal trade, and opponents picked up only four votes from 1998... GOP conservatives, who have assailed China's human rights record, condemned the House vote. GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said the vote "makes me ashamed to be a Republican"... 07/26/99 - THE LOS ANGELES TIMES - RONALD BROWNSTEIN   IN FRONT-LOADED PRIMARY SYSTEM, MONEY IS THE OVERWHELMING WINNER In Iowa this summer, Republican presidential contenders are as thick as fireflies. Parents are teaching their children to look twice for campaign buses before crossing the streets. The incessant candidate meetings have created such a space crunch that George W. Bush and Steve Forbes are competing to build new town halls for communities that are overbooked.   OK, maybe those are slight exaggerations. But Republican candidates have invaded Iowa at a pace this month that invites hyperbole. They are swarming the state to build support for a straw poll of GOP activists Aug. 14 in Ames (home of Iowa State University). No actual delegates for next year's GOP national convention are at stake; it's a purely symbolic showdown. Yet the straw poll has become a virtual life-and-death event for much of the Republican field. The reason helps explain why the modern system for picking presidential nominees is teetering on collapse.    The contemporary presidential primary system, which dates back roughly to the early 1970s, has tended to operate in two stages. In the first, which traditionally has lasted through mid-February, the field is winnowed by contests in small states. Then the surviving contenders--the finalists--battle through the bigger states to determine the nominee.    It's the winnowing stage that's ominously imploding.    Up until now, the responsibility for narrowing the field has been shared between the so-called money primary--the race for campaign cash in the year before actual voting--and the citizens of Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two key contests on the primary calendar. This system balanced the influence of donors and voters. It also provided an opportunity, even if a slim one, for dark-horse contenders without much money. Here's why. Under the old calendar, the nominating contest ran from early February until June. That left underfunded candidates enough time to raise money to compete in the decisive larger states if they could first break through in Iowa and New Hampshire, where it doesn't cost that much to run.    That's what Gary Hart did when he nearly swiped the Democratic nomination from front-runner Walter F. Mondale in 1984. Hart had raised only $1.5 million by New Hampshire, but after he upset Mondale there, he raised enough to compete all the way through California in June. Jimmy Carter leveraged the same strategy all the way to the White House in 1976. But such an approach is virtually impossible today because so many states have crammed their primaries into a six-week roller-coaster after Iowa and New Hampshire. Even if a dark-horse candidate does well in the first two contests, the compression of the calendar leaves him without enough time to replenish his checkbook before he must compete in the large and expensive states--from New York to Florida to California--that can decide the nomination.   That has compelled everyone (except the self-financed Forbes) to try to raise virtually all of their money this year... The rising clout of money is directly linked to the lemming-like rush of states to increase their say in choosing the nominees by "front-loading" their primaries into a narrow window after Iowa and New Hampshire. In elbowing their way to the front of the line, states hoped to increase the influence of their own voters. But collectively their actions have only shifted power from voters in all the states toward donors. Paradoxically, that is evident even in Ames, which offers the first chance for voters to cast a judgment on the 2000 GOP field. In some respects, the straw poll demonstrates the continued vitality of the grass-roots democratic tradition that has given Iowa and New Hampshire their unique role in selecting our presidents. Candidates are still making their case to small groups in American Legion halls and even standing on soapboxes in town squares on sleepy summer afternoons.    But the unusual importance of the straw poll this year actually testifies to the growing power of the donors. Above all, what has heightened the stakes is Bush's unprecedented dominance of the money primary. Ames offers the candidates chasing the Texas governor perhaps their last real chance this year to jump-start their lagging fund-raising by demonstrating a spark of political momentum. In other words, Ames is a political contest whose meaning is primarily defined by its impact on the financial contest. Commentator Patrick J. Buchanan has said that the grim reaper will be waiting outside the convention center in Ames for those candidates who fare badly. But it's really the repo man who will be tapping the losers on the shoulders.     Poor showings in Ames could force some debt-laden hopefuls to drop out (speculation centers on former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander and former Vice President Dan Quayle) and squeeze the already modest fund-raising for others (former Red Cross chief Elizabeth Hanford Dole, activist Gary Bauer and Buchanan) near the choking point. Only millionaire publisher Forbes (who can write his own checks) and Sen. John McCain of Arizona (who's sitting out Iowa to focus on New Hampshire) may have somewhat less at stake. With Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio already abandoning the race for lack of funds, most of the original GOP field could be comatose before any voter casts a ballot that counts...   Unless the parties reverse the front-loading and return to a more deliberative primary calendar, the power to pick their nominees will continue to drain away from coffee shops in Iowa and New Hampshire to $1,000-a-plate dinners in New York and Los Angeles. 07/26/99 - NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO - NPR [6/24]   REFORM PARTY'S ANNUAL CONVENTION [T]he Reform Party is holding its third annual national convention this weekend in Dearborn, Michigan. It's an event party members hope will give it a boost going into the 2000 election. Some Reform activists are counting on a third presidential bid by party founder Ross Perot. Others think Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is the key to the party's future. Minnesota public radio's Martin Kaste reports. MARTIN KASTE reporting: A new poll by the Pew Research Center indicates only 35 percent of voters are dissatisfied with the two major party front-runners for president next year: Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush. But here in Dearborn this weekend, dissatisfaction approaches 100 percent. Reform Party delegates have gathered here because they say the country's crying out for an alternative. Barb Skurnowicz is a Michigan native. Ms. BARB SKURNOWICZ: As far as I'm concerned, I'm looking for a second party, because I believe that the Republicans are -- the Republican and the Democrats cannot be separated. We call them Republicrats. I see a place to voice my concerns and my frustrations, and I find it here. KASTE: Skurnowicz is collecting names on a petition to draft Pat Buchanan as the Reform Party's presidential candidate. Just across the room, Dan Johnson-Weinberger is signing another petition, this one urging Ralph Nader to run under the Reform banner. Johnson-Weinberger acknowledges there's something contradictory about a party that includes supporters of Nader and Buchanan, a populist conservative. But he says both men oppose what he calls the corporate-dominated Wall Street government. Mr. DAN JOHNSON-WEINBERGER: I think the one thing that can unite Reform Party people is a desire to see some structural reform in our politics. And I think there's sort of like that anti-trade coalition in which people that don't seem like natural allies are getting together on a particular issue. I think issues like that can unite this sort of despaired group of people that only want to see some, you know, reforms.... MORE FROM THE INTERNET BRIGADE NEWSWIRE...

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