HUMAN EVENTS: Do you have the Reform Party nomination sewn
up?
BUCHANAN: No, it's not sewn up. But we are clearly
the frontrunner and there is at present no major
obstacle in our path to the nomination.
HUMAN EVENTS: How close are you to having it sewn up?
BUCHANAN: Well, they haven't done the balloting yet,
but we don't see anyone out there right now who can
beat us.
HUMAN EVENTS: Do you have any reason to believe that Ross
Perot is going to jump into the race?
BUCHANAN: I have no reason at all to believe that he
will jump into the race, and I have no solid evidence
that he won't. But there is no reason to believe that
he will.
HUMAN EVENTS: So, it's an open question?
BUCHANAN: It is an open question, but all the
indications we get would point to the fact that he is
not running.
HUMAN EVENTS: Can you describe for us the scenario by which
you think you can be elected President in 2000 as the
Reform Party nominee?
BUCHANAN: I think that first we advance on the
nomination and we move up in the polls. We have a
unified convention that is very exciting and gets
tremendous national coverage. We come out of
there, and, by one of many ways, we are included in
the presidential debates. Given that neither Bush nor
Gore has yet closed the sale to the American people,
I think the race would be wide open. I think there is
a real chance we could turn this into a real
three-way race.
Look at what I did in 1992 and 1996 starting at
nowhere and almost beating the President of the
United States in New Hampshire, starting at 5% or
6% in 1996 and beating Dole in New Hampshire, and
almost breaking through. You see what Ventura did.
He was at 10% on October 1 and then went into a
number of debates and won the governorship.
McCain was at 5% nationally perhaps, he beats
Bush in New Hampshire, and, suddenly, he's beating
Al Gore in every one of the polls.
The electorate today has less allegiance and loyalty
to the political parties than it has ever had before.
There are millions or tens of millions of voters, I
think, who have dropped out of politics who don't
believe the national political game really means
anything to them. I think the potential there is
extraordinary. I don't know exactly how great, but I
believe it's great and we're going to try to tap it.
HUMAN EVENTS: You filed a lawsuit to get into the presidential
debates. Is winning that lawsuit crucial to your
strategy?
BUCHANAN: We have three avenues to get into the
presidential debates. One is the legal road through
the Federal Election Commission and the federal
courts. The FEC has 120 days to rule on our
pleading. If they rule against us, or don't make a
ruling at all, we take it immediately to the federal
court.
I think our case now is stronger than Perot's was in
1996. We are today one of three parties that has met
the criteria set by Congress to receive federal tax
dollars. The idea that the other two parties should not
be allowed to conspire to keep this party out of the
events that are going to decide the presidency of the
United States is an enormously powerful argument.
Quite frankly, it would mean that the Committee on
Presidential Debatesówhich is supposed to be
nonpartisan, but which is in reality bipartisan amounts
to an enormous illegal contribution to the two national
parties. What it would be doing is giving the
presidency of the United States to one or the other.
So, we think our legal case against that is very
strong.
The second avenue is public opinion. In 1996, we
were kept off the primary ballot in a number of
congressional districts in New York. John McCain
was kept out of a number of New York
congressional districts this year. Eventually, he
shamed Gov. George Pataki and Gov. George W.
Bush and others into saying, "Let him on the ballot."
Come September, if Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore and the
Republican and Democratic parties are united in
trying to keep us out of the debates, we will have a
club with which to beat them every single day. I
think there is a real possibility that they will collapse
before the debates and say we have to bring him in.
The third way is that we reach the 15% threshold in
the polls, and I think it is perfectly plausible that we
may be able to do that, depending on what the media
do.
HUMAN EVENTS: Will you be on the ballot in all 50 states?
BUCHANAN: Yes. That's our plan, it's budgeted, that
sure is.
HUMAN EVENTS: So far, in how many states have you qualified
for the ballot?
BUCHANAN: The Reform Party was in 21 when we
got into it, we took it to 22, with Utah, then Ventura
took his Minnesota party out, so it's back to 21. The
deadlines for South Dakota and Hawaii are coming
up in April. In May, the big ones start falling and
continue through June and July. We're on schedule.
We have folks working in all these states right now.
HUMAN EVENTS: Would you have run for the Reform Party
nomination if you didn't think you could get elected
President?
BUCHANAN: If I did not believe we had a fighting
chance to win the presidency of the United States,
and if I thought we were just going to get a John
Anderson-style vote, I would not have run.
HUMAN EVENTS: At some point in the campaign if you decide that
you cannot win in the fall, will you drop out of the
race?
BUCHANAN: The answer is no.
HUMAN EVENTS: So you're in this through November no matter
what?
BUCHANAN: When you give people your word and you
lead them into this battle, you've got to take it all the
way to the finish and we're going to do it.
HUMAN EVENTS: What is the most important disagreement that
you have with Gov. Bush on the issues? What made
it imperative for Pat Buchanan to challenge the
Republican nominee?
BUCHANAN: While Gov. Bush is a pleasant man and
has abilities as a candidate, I think he is basically the
embodiment of the political establishment of the
Republican Party which has failed us. It is really
almost a Xerox copy of the Democratic
establishment in this city. It may raise money for the
Department of Education beyond what Mr. Clinton
does. They applaud an illegal, unconstitutional, unjust
war in Kosovo. They embrace even more
enthusiastically than Mr. Clinton MFN for China.
They are pro-NAFTA. They are pro-WTO. They
are in favor of NATO expansion. They will do
nothing about immigration. They will not talk about
illegal immigration. Simply go down the list of issues
about which I've written books and in many cases
they are worse than the Democratic Party. That's
the political establishment. It is not the heart and soul
of the Republican Party, but it is the establishment.
We are not going to support that establishment ever
again.
HUMAN EVENTS: You've just outlined opposition to the entire
leadership of the Republican Party not just George
Bush.
BUCHANAN: I think that Gov. Bush is basically a
representation of that political establishment. I do not
believe that Gov. Bush is someone like a Nixon who
came to the White House with his own foreign policy
vision or a Reagan who came with a philosophy that
he was going to hold to no matter what the
Republican establishment believed. I have no
personal animus or grudge toward Gov. Bush, but I
think he is representative of the establishment.
HUMAN EVENTS: Even though your differences are with the
Republican establishment -- not the party rank and
file -- do you envision building a permanent third
party to oppose the Republican Party on your
issues?
BUCHANAN: We envision building a third party that is
populist, which is traditionalist, which is small
government, which is noninterventionist, which puts
America first, which restores America's full
sovereignty, which believes in judges that respect the
Constitution, which will cut taxes and will downsize
this monstrous federal government. And we believe
in making that an institution that attracts enough
people so that we can eventually become the second
party.
HUMAN EVENTS: Will this new second party also be a socially
conservative party?
BUCHANAN: I will be the leader of it. It will be a
socially conservative party. The platform will be all
the things I've mentioned so far and I intend to
append to the platform a personal statement of my
convictions and beliefs about life and other social,
cultural and moral issues, and my commitment to
appoint only pro-life justices to the Supreme Court.
That will be a personal statement that the presidential
candidate will append to the platform.
HUMAN EVENTS: That's in this election cycle. But in the
long-term, looking strategically down the road to
building another second party for America, do you
envision that that would be a socially conservative
party?
BUCHANAN: Yes it would.
HUMAN EVENTS: If it is going to be a socially conservative party,
why wouldn't it be in the platform?
BUCHANAN: Someone told me, Pat, more than half the
people in the Reform Party are pro-life, we just don't
put those issues in the forefront. But I have always
believed that a party is eventually defined by the
leader it chooses. When the Republican Party came
into the White House with Nixon and Agnew in the
1960s, they represented Middle America. They were
standing up for the guys in Vietnam. It was an
appealing thing because they represented
anti-establishment, outside-the-beltway, patriotism
and law and order.
When Reagan was the leader of
the party, he was the embodiment of the party. I
think I will be the representative figure of the
Reform Party for as long as I am leading it. I think
that will attract some people and obviously some
folks like Gov. Ventura will find that unacceptable.
That's the way it's going to be.
HUMAN EVENTS: You think you can remake it in your image?
BUCHANAN: It was the image of Ross Perot and I
think it will be a Buchanan party.
HUMAN EVENTS: If you become the first Reform Party President,
would you rule out naming anyone to the Supreme
Court who thinks Roe v. Wade was correctly
decided?
BUCHANAN: Of course.
HUMAN EVENTS: What about the lower courts?
BUCHANAN: What I'm going to commit myself to is the
U.S. Supreme Court, for this reason: When you get
up to the Hill at times, you've got a lot of these
senators, two of them from the same state, pushing
their judge, and if you can get their votes by getting
them a judge in exchange for the Supreme Court
justices you want, you might have to make that kind
of a deal. I would say Supreme Court justices will all
be pro-life and any single decision that is taken at a
state level is going to have to go through the state
courts. It might be decided one way here, and
another way there, on the appellate court. It doesn't
make any difference: In the end, it's going to come to
the Supreme Court, and that's what I would commit
myself to: The United States Supreme Court will be
pro-life.
Let me say, that I would try to make every other
judge that I could pro-life. But if you had to get into a
situation where the deal is you get this guy for that
and you get a Supreme Court justice, what can you
do?
HUMAN EVENTS: Would you veto any appropriation that included
money to promote or perform abortions in the United
States or overseas?
BUCHANAN: I certainly would. I would zero out
Planned Parenthood. I would zero out the United
Nations Family Planning Agency. I would zero out all
fetal-tissue research.
HUMAN EVENTS: Embryo research, also?
BUCHANAN: Exactly.
HUMAN EVENTS: If you were President would you continue
Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on
homosexuals in the military, or would you go back to
the pre-Clinton policy in which people were asked if
they were homosexual and were excluded if they
said, Yes.
BUCHANAN: I believe that homosexuality is
incompatible with military service. I think we have to
say so. I believe that ought to be the policy.
Secondly, I don't believe women belong in combat. I
would review, and my present intent would be to
repeal, the idea that women belong on warships. I
don't think that they belong there. Clearly, women
are as patriotic as men. They have a role as
volunteers in the military. I would never draft
women.
Women can perform far more duties in the service
than they once did, but not combat duty.
I believe we're going to have great and constant
difficulties with this issue until we come out with the
policy we used to have, which was correct and was
not wrong, which was that homosexuality is
incompatible with military service and quite
especially in places like West Point, Annapolis,
barracks and places like that.
HUMAN EVENTS: Would you support and sign legislation that
would extend 14th Amendment equal protection
rights to the unborn child?
BUCHANAN: Sure, I'd sign it. Again, that would go right
on over to the Supreme Court. You've got to get
your justices on the Supreme Court. If you don't
have the justices on the Supreme Court, you can do
an awful lot of things and then they ask for a couple
of months until the Supreme Court turns them down.
The Supreme Court is crucial.
HUMAN EVENTS: You would promote that as a test case?
BUCHANAN: Sure. Let me say this: Frankly, there are
challenges that ought to be made of the Supreme
Court. Let me give you one example: I would not
oppose religious folks in a public school, on National
Prayer Day, beginning a class with a voluntary
prayer. Then let the sheriffs come in and arrest them
and see what happens.
I think you put your Justice Department on the side
of those doing the praying. You want to do
everything by the law, but there is nothing wrong
with challenging the Supreme Court's decisions in a
manner similar to the way in which civil rights
leaders once challenged them. They did it
peacefully.
HUMAN EVENTS: But, if you could get it through the Supreme
Court, a President Buchanan would enact a law that
banned abortion nationwide by extending 14th
Amendment rights to the unborn child?
BUCHANAN: Yes. I think immediately it would go right
back to the states.
HUMAN EVENTS: You have said you are planning a speech on
taxes soon. Are you looking at proposing a flat tax,
or are you looking to cut the marginal income tax
rates, or go to a consumption tax? What would be
the main thrust of your plan?
BUCHANAN: I don't think you can get a flat tax
through. We are looking at a reduction in marginal
tax rates in all categories. We're looking at
elimination of the estate taxes. We're looking at
shifting the burden off small business entirely if you
can and shifting the burden onto transnational
corporations. We are looking at revenue from a 10%
or 15% revenue tariff on imports which would also
be used to cut taxes on exports from the United
States and to cut tax rates for the public.
One idea we have is to come in and within 100 days
demand repeal of both the Bush and Clinton tax
increases. Then I would have my full tax proposal
ready to go and demand that Congress have it back
on my desk for a signature by July 4, 2002óbecause
the longer tax reform is going to take time.
These are some of the ideas we're looking at. We
are costing them out. We haven't come down hard
on any of them yet.
HUMAN EVENTS: What would you do about the capital gains tax?
BUCHANAN: Capital gains would be cut by an
exclusion of 50% or 60%. In other words, if you cut
the top rate from 39.6% to 30% and you had a 50%
exclusion on capital gains, the maximum effective
rate on capital gains would be 15%. If you had
capital gains tax rates of 10, 20 and 30 percent, and
an exclusion of 60%, a working or middle class
person would pay an effective capital gains tax rate
of 8%.
HUMAN EVENTS: You intend to come in with a bigger tax cut than
Bush?
BUCHANAN: We intend to have a bigger tax cut than
Gov. Bush.
HUMAN EVENTS: What is your plan to deal with the pending
insolvency of Social Security?
BUCHANAN: The insolvency is something you're not
going to be able to deal with unless you get both
parties with it. Basically, you're going to have to get
together with both parties after you get in. I have not
made any decision on what exactly ought to be done.
I do think this, with the Social Security surplus, the
idea of setting it aside and putting it in accounts with
names on it so that politicians aren't playing with it is
an idea I would look at. We haven't come all the way
full scale to that. I know they are talking now about
using that surplus to "pay down debt." But my feeling
is the way they are going on the Hill it's going to be
spent.
HUMAN EVENTS: You are not necessarily committed to personal
retirement accounts?
BUCHANAN: Not locked in, no. One of the problems is
in a campaign you don't want to get bogged down in
a battle on a ground that's very controversial and that
people don't understand and they are not sure about.
The idea is to get areas we want to hit and lay out
our program in the areas we want to attack and
proceed forward on those and on the others leave
the door open.
HUMAN EVENTS: As a matter of principle, you're not opposed to
private Social Security accounts?
BUCHANAN: Not at all.
HUMAN EVENTS: What do you make of Al Gore's posturing on
campaign finance reform despite his track record in
that area?
BUCHANAN: You don't mind the ladies of the evening
rejoining the church but you do hate like the devil to
see them leading the choir the first night.
HUMAN EVENTS: Given the current widespread prosperity, why
would people support your approach economically,
when it is such a transformation with tariffs and
things?
BUCHANAN: That's a fair question. I think there are a
lot of things that are unsustainable. The merchandise
trade deficit, which as of January hit $420 billion
dollars a year, is not sustainable. A foreign policy
where we're defending the borders of something like
fifty countries around the world on a defense budget
of 3% of GDP, half of which goes to pay and
benefits, is not sustainable. I think a stock market
where stocks are selling at 100 or 200 times earnings
is not sustainable.
I saw yesterday that an English company was selling
at 14,000 times earnings, that's not sustainable.
Someone told me, "Pat, if they can fight wars from
15,000 feet where no Americans get killed, and the
stock market is going at 11,000 and soaring, it's going
to be very tough to make your case." There's no
question about that. That is reality. Our job is to tell
them the truth as we see it, to lay it out there
because I think the United States has a huge margin
for error, but we're using it up. I think one day soon
the chickens are going to come home to roost from
all these policies, and we will be proven right.
HUMAN EVENTS: In what sense?
BUCHANAN: You cannot sustain the value of your
currency on trade deficits and current account
deficits like this. One day the value of your currency
is going to go down and the people who have been
financing this deficit for us are going to take their
money back. When they do, we are going to have a
real correction, and it's going to be deadly serious.
And your job is to tell people the truth.
HUMAN EVENTS: The United States is still the most powerful
country in the world. We have tremendous things
going as far as technology is concerned. The
doomsayers up to this point have not been proved
right. You can't look at any other nation in the world
that has an economy that matches ours.
BUCHANAN: There is no doubt that there are good
things happening in this country in terms of full
employment, in terms of reduction in crime. There is
no doubt that things look good in a lot of ways, and
you don't want those things to go wrong that are
doing well. But I do believe this trade deficit is
hollowing out traditional industry in this country.
Fundamentally, there is nothing we make here that
can't be made somewhere else and given the global
free trade policies that we practice and that the
Europeans practice, one day it is all going to be made
somewhere else. When it is, they are going to start
asking us: "What is it that we get from the
Americans for what we produce? We get those little
green pieces of paper and we start to need a lot
more of them."
We are now following the trade policy that was
pursued by the British in 19th century that by World
War I put them in a position where they could almost
be starved to death by submarines.
HUMAN EVENTS: In the 1960s, we let Japanese cars in, although
there was a quota on them, and it broke the
stranglehold of unions in Detroit and it turned out to
be a good thing. It's not an either/or situation, is it?
BUCHANAN: We're importing ten times as many cars
from Mexico as we export to Mexico today. The
point is we are building fewer and fewer cars here in
the United States of America. We are losing our
auto industry.
HUMAN EVENTS: You have long used the metaphor that America,
like Gulliver, is being tied down by multiple little
strands that represent international organizations and
treaties that restrict our sovereignty, and that
someday we'll awaken to find we cannot escape. As
President, how far will you go to pull up these
strands? For example, would you pull the U.S. out of
the WTO?
BUCHANAN: The WTO won't survive the Buchanan
trade policy. I'm a free market guy and I believe in
small government. But I believe in the national free
market rather than the global free market. I believe
that Americans compete with Americans and their
wages are the highest in the world. In many cases
they are going to go up higher than folks in other
countries that don't have the same culture, the same
traditions, and the same free market we do. So, I
think you would probably give the WTO six months
notice, or if it says our laws are GATT illegal and
we've got to repeal them, we'd just say we're not
going to do it, goodbye.
HUMAN EVENTS: So, would you even care if China were a
member of an organization that the U.S was not in?
BUCHANAN: Not really. Just like they used to say at
the UN: Bring in Communist China, let's give them
our seat.
q
HUMAN EVENTS: Would you dissolve the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA)?
BUCHANAN: NAFTA has got to be renegotiated. What
you have across the border are 4,000 factories and
one million workers. So, you've got to renegotiate
NAFTA and stop the constant export of your jobs.
NAFTA and Mexico are a particular case because
Mexico is our neighbor and we are there forever.
HUMAN EVENTS: But under President Buchanan, all the
corporations that built factories in Mexico are still
going to be able to export their goods out of Mexico
and into the United States?
BUCHANAN: I don't think you can throw them into a
depression. What you do is say thus far and no
further.
HUMAN EVENTS: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have
been brought in as new members of NATO. Now,
they are talking about bringing in the Baltic states.
Would President Buchanan expand NATO to the
Baltics?
BUCHANAN: No. It does not go into the Baltics. It does
not go to Ukraine. It does not go any further. We
basically promised the Russians that we would not
expand NATO to the East if they let East Germany
go and took the Red Army and went home, and we
double-crossed them.
HUMAN EVENTS: But you're not going to withdraw membership
from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic?
BUCHANAN: No, they are in there. But I'll tell you
what I would do. I would take a hard look at NATO
and say that the ground troops in NATO henceforth
are going to be provided by Europeans. And I would
bring all American ground forces home from Europe.
It would be one year out of Kosovo, and four years
out of Europe.
HUMAN EVENTS: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is calling
the Kosovo intervention a success. Do opponents of
the war in Kosovo have to eat crow now that it
hasn't blown up as they worried it might?
BUCHANAN: Let's see: We had a fairly good
arrangement with 1,200 monitors in there. There was
a low-grade civil war with the Kosovo Liberation
Army fighting the Serb police and army. I think we
could have negotiated a solution which would have
avoided war so we would not be there now.
But let's look at the balance sheet from the war.
Russia and China have been alienated. The Russian
people, who looked upon the American people as
great friends, reversed their opinion overnight when
we smashed Serbia. We have ruined Serbia, a
country that never threatened or attacked us.
NATO
has diminished its moral authority. It was a great
defensive alliance and now it's an offensive attack
alliance which attacked a country that didn't threaten
NATO. In Kosovo, there has been total ethnic
cleansing. Half the Albanians were out, now they are
back. But now, 200,000 Serbs have been driven out
of their homes. You have two communities at
sword's point and we've got 30,000 or 40,000 NATO
troops in there and if we pull them out everybody is
going to start killing each other.
Now, this to me is not a success, the enthusiasm of
our Xenia over at the State Department
notwithstanding.
I think it was a disaster. I think it was one of the
worst things that was done and one of the most
stupid things done in my lifetime.
HUMAN EVENTS: That's the strategic balance sheet. What about
the moral question of Kosovo. Was it a morally
justified war?
BUCHANAN: Well, I think the damage done far
outweighed the damage we prevented. We
destroyed a country. Before the war was ignited,
there was a maximum of 90,000 refugees from
Kosovo -- some say only 25,000. After that, we had
750,000 lose their homes, and then come back.
Thousands died in Kosovo itself, hundreds or
thousands more in Serbia. Two hundred thousand
Serbs have been ethnically cleansed. Even on that
balance sheet, it is not a victory. The objective should
be to try to minimize killing and minimize suffering,
and I don't think the war did that.
HUMAN EVENTS: Is there any scenario that you see in which the
United States ought to get involved in the internal
affairs of a sovereign nation based on a human rights
problem within that nation?
BUCHANAN: No. What we wind up doing is beating up
little countries like Haiti. They've got a human rights
problem and they get the 82nd Airborne. The
Chinese deal with Tibet in a far more brutal way
than Milosevic deals with the Kosovar Albanians and
they get permanent MFN and a declaration that they
are our "strategic partners." Burma is a weak
country, so they get sanctions. But if you build a
nuclear weapon like North Korea, you get atomic
power plants and fuel oil. This is an absurd policy.
It
is a policy, quite frankly, that is very craven: If you
build nuclear weapons, the Americans will kow tow
to you. But if you are small and weak and you don't
have surface-to-air missiles, then a cruise missile is
coming your way if you offend Bill Clinton.
HUMAN EVENTS: How would you contain China?
BUCHANAN: I don't think China is going to invade
Taiwan. I don't think they have the ability to come
across the Taiwan Strait with an invasion force.
They don't have the ships to do it, and the Taiwanese
would shoot them out of the water. But they are
building up their missile forces, which I believe they
want to use for intimidation or more. I think that
further down the road, when they get the whole
missile force built, what they may have in mind is
either barrage firing or serial firing at Taiwan to
intimidate them and to threaten the United States.
U.S. bases in the Far East could be hit with these
missiles, too.
So, the Chinese have to realize that if they make that
move, it's not for sure that the Taiwanese are going
to break and say: "We give up. Come on over." It is
for sure that they are going to lose their entire U.S.
market and their investment, if the Americans have
any leadership, their economy is going into the
dumpster.
HUMAN EVENTS: You would not rule out using military force to
defend Taiwan?
BUCHANAN: I would not rule it out.
HUMAN EVENTS: Would you grant permanent MFN to China?
BUCHANAN: I would not grant permanent MFN to
China. I would go over to China, sit down with them
and say: "Look, we really are buying 40% of
everything you guys export here. You are buying 1%
of what we export, and you're threatening our friends
with war and you're threatening us with missiles and
every time there is a public protest about a Christian
being persecuted he gets an extra ten years.
Now,
this is not sustainable. If you want us to treat you like
Great Britain you're going to have to behave a bit
more like Great Britain. Frankly, we want a good
relationship with you. We don't want war. We don't
want containment. We're not out to drive you folks
down. But we have commitments just as you folks
do, and frankly let's start it out with trade." It's an old
Kissingerian word, but we've got to use linkage.
HUMAN EVENTS: So far, the Republican leaders in Congress seem
to be backing permanent MFN for China and not
linking it with protecting Taiwan.
BUCHANAN: They are willing to risk the lives of the
guys in the Seventh Fleet defending Taiwan, but they
are not willing to risk the profits of the Business
Roundtable.
HUMAN EVENTS: You have said that there is a cultural war raging
for the soul of America. By associating with people
like Lenora Fulani, and using the term "populist," and
a lot of anti-elite rhetoric, aren't you encouraging the
sort of leftist-egalitarian philosophy that we should be
combating?
BUCHANAN: No. I don't think so. Lenora Fulani has
endorsed me.
HUMAN EVENTS: She's a national co-chair of your campaign?
BUCHANAN: She's a co-chair. Ezola Foster [an
African-American conservative activist from
Southern California] is also a co-chair. Pat Choate is
a co-chair. Rabbi Arieh Spero is a co-chair. My
sister, Bay, is a co-chair. Lenora Fulani is a co-chair,
but she's not in our staff meetings here.
Look, I've been asked about this everywhere I go.
She's endorsed us. The only thing we talked about
that I said we agreed on -- and which we included in
a speech at Harvard -- are the political reforms that I
don't know any conservative has stood up and
opposed, except for some of my own folks, who
don't like a national initiative and referendum.
Those
reform issues are her issues. Those are the areas
where I said, yes, I agree with her. I came out for
same day voting. It got a tremendous turnout in
Minnesota. If you can take your driver's license with
your picture on it to get an e-ticket and get on an
airplane, what's wrong with showing your driver's
license and voting? I don't have a problem with that
in federal elections. So, that's the one thing that
concerned her. But it's the only issue I've ever heard
her talk about to say: "Can you say this?"
HUMAN EVENTS: Isn't she well-known as a Marxist?
BUCHANAN: She endorsed me. And at the Marxist
Club, she's probably got some problems explaining
that.
HUMAN EVENTS: If Christie Todd Whitman endorsed you would
you accept it?
BUCHANAN: If she endorsed me, yes. I would say, I
believe she's dead wrong on life. I mean, Pat Choate
is pro-choice and he's endorsed us.
