Pat Buchanan said yesterday that he has four principal rivals for
the Republican presidential nomination and all of them "are virtual Xerox
copies" of President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore on the most
important issues facing the nation.
He said the four -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush, former Red Cross
President Elizabeth Dole, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and publisher Steve
Forbes -- all share the same views on everything from Kosovo, China trade
and international banking and trade organizations to foreign aid and
"open-borders" immigration.
Mr. Buchanan reserved his strongest condemnations for the war against
Yugoslavia, which he called "Bill Clinton's misadventure."
"The Serbs have seen their country smashed by Americans they once
admired," said Mr. Buchanan, who is making his third bid for the GOP
nomination. "The Kosovars have suffered a catastrophe. . . . The U.S. has
seen its superpower status and reputation for decency tarnished by the
pounding of a tiny country that never threatened us."
"It is neither just nor moral for a superpower to ravage the civilian
economy of a country for refusing to give up sacred land [the province of
Kosovo] that has belonged to Serbia for generations," he said, drawing
applause from a National Press Club luncheon audience.
Mr. Buchanan said if any one of the candidates he designated as his
main rivals wins the GOP nomination, "we risk a replay of 1992 and 1996,
where both major parties will agree on most major issues, and a pillow
fight will ensue over some dinky tax cut."
"This may satisfy the political establishment, but it would cheat
Middle America," said the conservative commentator.
He warned that "tens of millions of Americans will not vote, millions
more will cast protest votes for [Ross Perot's] Reform Party, the
Taxpayers Party, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party."
A general election in 2000 between Mr. Gore and one of the "Xerox
copy"
Republicans would represent a "politics of inconsequentiality," Mr.
Buchanan said.
Americans, he said, would be condemned to a choice between "two
compulsive interventionists" who believe in "open borders" on immigration
-- "one-worlders, enthralled by a Utopian vision of a different America or
seized by the allure of some New World Order."
Calling his main GOP rivals "good and able individuals," he said
their
biggest mistake has been to endorse the war against Serbia. "I believe
truly this war is the product of a hubris and an arrogance that has marked
American foreign policy since our triumph in the Cold War and against
which I have been warning since the end of that Cold War," he said.
"I am here to underscore my profound disagreements not only with Mr.
Clinton and Mr. Gore, but with my principal rivals," he said, and singled
out Mr. Forbes for wanting to arm the mostly Islamic Kosovo Liberation
Army. Mr. Buchanan said such a move would assure "an Afghanistan-type war
between Muslims and Christians."
Mr. Buchanan commended Mr. McCain "for forthrightness and not
engaging
in trivial pursuits but contending about the central issues of our day."
Referring to the senator's popularity with the news media -- his
hawkish views on Kosovo have earned him numerous TV appearances -- Mr.
Buchanan joked that Mr. McCain "is clearly this year's favorite for the
1999 William Ginsburg trophy -- named after Monica Lewinsky's legendary
lawyer."
Mr. Buchanan noted that Mr. Ginsburg once "appeared on no fewer than
five Sunday morning talk shows in a single morning."
Mr. Buchanan, who challenged President Bush in the 1992 GOP
primaries,
also had some barbed humor about the former president's son. The younger
Bush has surrounded himself with former Reagan and Bush advisers on
national and foreign affairs and has refrained from campaigning for the
nomination while Texas lawmakers were still in session.
"And now that the Long Parliament known as the Texas Legislature has
adjourned and Gov. Bush has emerged from his tutorials, perhaps a great
debate over America's destiny and role in the world can now get under
way," Mr. Buchanan said, drawing gales of laughter from the audience.
