Buchanan Wraps Himself In McCain's Flag
of Reform
....
Mr. Buchanan
tailored his remarks to that cause as he
took his quest for the Reform Party
nomination to Harvard University and
accused the two major parties of huge
fund-raising abuses in "an incumbents
protection racket."
"Both Beltway parties are chemically
dependent on soft money," Mr. Buchanan
told an overflow crowd of more than 300
at the John F. Kennedy School of
Government in a speech starkly different
from the "pitchfork brigade" appeals of
past campaigns to voters aggrieved with a
variety of economic and social complaints.
"We get no soft money and we take no
PAC money."
"Neither Beltway party is going to drain
this swamp: it's a protected wetland; they
breed in it, they spawn in it," Mr.
Buchanan added, sparking general
laughter and applause.
He even updated his stump graphics with
a giant mock check at his side made out
for hundreds of millions of dollars to the major parties and signed by
"Influence Peddlers" .....
Mr. Buchanan gave as good as he got, at one point defending his
accusation that Harvard employs elitist quotas favoring groups like Jewish-
and Asian-American students at the expense of the nation's white
Christian majority.
"Simply because you're at Harvard does not exempt you from the same
kind of rules and regulations that Harvard lovingly imposes upon the rest of
America," he shot back at one critic. "Pat Buchanan is not a beloved figure
in America, but neither is Harvard" .....
Throughout his remarks, Mr. Buchanan made clear his determination to
stay in the race and fight for an equal spotlight in this fall's televised
presidential debates if, as he expects, he wins the Reform nomination. He
said that he expected the major parties to try to block this and that he was
preparing a lawsuit to challenge for debating time.
"People have ruined the conservative cause," he declared in criticizing
Republican leaders and rebutting a questioner who called him "a
reactionary in reformer's clothing."
"For the last seven years they conflated the conservative cause with
Clinton bashing," he added.
Framing his speech as a detailed cry for reform, Mr. Buchanan called for a
ban on unlimited contributions to political parties, or soft money, and the
creation of a national initiative and referendum process to let voters
directly change the system. He also urged the imposition of term limits on
Congress, a body he described as so beholden to big-money donors that it
had become a "bellhop stand for the business roundtable" ....
Students questioned how the Reform Party, which in the past shied from
social and cultural issues, might ever embrace Mr. Buchanan, whose
opposition to abortion has been his political keystone. The candidate replied
that he had not altered his views but, rather than feature them in the
Reform platform, he would "append" them to the platform as a personal
statement....
