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Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan (left) poses for a photo
with supporter Norma Raymont, of Mt. Lebanon, following a fund
raising luncheon at the Rivers Club in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Photo by: Martha Rial / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |
While a few score of supporters perused the cold buffet in the next room, a straight-faced Patrick Buchanan said, "We figure we'll pick up about a million and a half in here this morning."
The three-time presidential candidate was kidding. His take at a lunchtime fund-raiser at the Rivers Club, Downtown, was a little short of that -- about $1,493,000 short, according to the calculation of his host, former congressional candidate Bill Ravotti.
But the conservative's tongue-in-cheek estimate was the prelude to a serious critique yesterday of money in politics and the presidential race in particular.
The figure Buchanan mentioned may be far-fetched in his own campaign. He had raised about $2.4 million as of June 30 and expected to realize from $7,000 to $10,000 from the Pittsburgh event.
But only weeks earlier, his rival, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, came to Pittsburgh on a day when his campaign raised almost $1.5 million in a round of events across the state, part of the $37 million that the GOP front-runner has collected so far.
Denouncing the dominance of fund raising, Buchanan said, "Public policy, trade policy and foreign policy, I believe, are virtually being bought and sold for gigantic contributions from transnational corporations."
Buchanan said that if Congress acquiesces to a pending proposal to grant favored trade status to China, it would prove that "the Republican Party is in hock to the Business Roundtable."
If he could dictate U.S. trade policy toward China, Buchanan said during his brief speech to supporters, he would tell the Chinese government that it must change its policies on human rights and other contentious issues or "you will have sold your last pair of chopsticks in any mall in the United States."
Turning to the impact of money in the competition that brought him to Pittsburgh yesterday, he said, "With due respect, Mr. [Steve] Forbes is a good man, but if he wins the nomination, it will be for one reason alone -- and it ain't charisma."
In contrast to Forbes, Buchanan acknowledged that Bush -- whose campaign, like Forbes', is so flush that it has decided not to accept federal matching funds -- has credentials that go beyond money.
"[Bush] has been elected governor of a great state twice. My disagreements with Mr. Bush are profound on the issues," he said. "On global trade, on the war in Kosovo, on open borders, immigration, he is 100 percent in agreement with Bill Clinton and Al Gore."
And Buchanan insisted that he was not deterred by the spending advantages of his competitors.
"I don't believe the Republican nomination can be bought, and I don't believe the presidency of the United States can be bought," he said.
Buchanan would leave the Rivers Club to head to Weirton, W.Va., to pick up an endorsement that reflected one of his disagreements with most of his GOP rivals. Buchanan has consistently taken a hard line against what he and others characterize as unfair trade practices, including the dumping of foreign steel in U.S. markets.
That stand won him the endorsement of the 4,000-member Independent Steelworkers Union at Weirton Steel Corp.
Buchanan drove to the Ohio River town to greet union leaders and join in a workers' picnic later in the afternoon.
