Transcribed by Greg Moeller - Iowa - GregM7@aol.com
(All Comments in brackets are added)
[During floor proceedings on Saturday, pro-life state delegates were
successful in winning 86 of the States 123 delegates going on to the GOP
national convention. Pat Buchanan is addressing the approximately 16,000
attending.]
[Applause]
Good to see you!
[Shows thumbs up & laughs]
Good to see you!
[Laughs more as applause gets louder]
Listen! With that kind of reception, I think I'm going to demand a re-count
in the Texas Primary!
[More applause]
And don't you worry about Pat going,
just keep your pitchforks sharp, we're going all the way to San Diego!
[applause]
You know, I talked briefly with my friend Tom Paukin [possible misspell] who
I've known since he was a Vietnam Vet and a young leader in the Conservative
movement, he said, "Pat, are you really going to hit Clinton today?" I said,
"I can't do it Tom, I don't want to hit a man who's on active duty!"
[laughter & applause]
You know, people have asked me, "Pat, why do you stay in this campaign?" and
I want to talk seriously for a moment, "Why do you stay in and go all the way
to San Diego, as a candidate?" and my answer is this: The nomination battle
for the Presidency is about more than who gets the nomination. It's also
about the heart & soul of a party. And we know this nomination battle has
been won, and we of course do not challenge that verdict, Senator Dole is the
nominee of our party. But let me say this, in the primaries, there were other
verdicts, and one of those verdicts was, that we shall remain the Pro-Life
party of Ronald Wilson Reagan.
[standing applause]
You know, three million
Republicans, Independents, Perot voters, Democrats voted for Pat Buchanan in
the primaries. Many of them did so because they believed in me, and I signed
a pledge, it's called The Pro-Life Pledge of Support, "I pledge my support
for the 1996 re-adoption of the principle pro-life plank in the previous
Republican national platforms." Now my friends, that plank was put into our
party in Detroit in 1980. It was reaffirmed in Dallas in '84, reaffirmed in
New Orleans in '88, reaffirmed in Houston in 1992, and if the people in the
convention [here] in San Antonio will reaffirm it today, I will lead that
battle to keep it in our platform in San Diego in 1996.
[Applause]
You know, our party has a great and glorious history. In 1860 we were the
party of Mr. Lincoln that extended human rights to a whole segment of
Americans who had been denied citizenship and human rights. From 1860 to
1932, there were 13 Republican presidents and only 2 Democratic presidents;
and in those years, we were the articulators of an economic nationalism that
put our own country first, and it built America. From an agricultural and
rural nation into the greatest industrial nation the world had ever seen,
with the highest standard of living the world had ever seen. In the last 12
years, from 1980 to 1992, our party had the proud honor of leading America to
victory in the cold war under the leadership of Ronald Wilson Reagan and
George Herbert Walker Bush...and both of them deserve credit for that
victory!
[applause]
So, now we've entered a new era, my friends, the era of the tough
anti-communism that took us to victory in the past, that was the conservatism
of my generation. But America needs a new conservatism of the heart, a
conservatism of the heart provides a voice for the voiceless, not only for
the innocent pre-born, but for the elderly, the men and women that brought us
through the depression, and World War II.
[applause]
You know, what are these
wonderful Americans to think when they see on ballot after ballot and state
after state, resolutions to provide for euthanasia, or assisted suicide for
the elderly and infirm? It's not our America! We've got to provide a voice
for them and we've got to provide a voice for the working men and women of
this country, Hispanic-American, Asian, White, Black-Americans, Union and
Non-Union whose jobs are being sold out in trade deals for the benefit of
multi-national corporations without any loyalty to their country or any
allegiance to their workers!
[applause]
You know Bob Dole is right, he said America is choking on a lot of these
trade deals because Bill Clinton is not enforcing them. Look what happened as
a consequence of NAFTA: We were promised a trade surplus, we got a 18 billion
dollar trade deficit, 360,000 lost jobs this year, illegal immigration is
soaring, narcotics are pouring into this country, [all] as a consequence of
that trade deal. And Bill Clinton put together a 50 billion dollar bailout,
for the Mexican government of Carlos Salinas, and his brother Raul! Raul got
away with 100 million dollars! Carlos, whom we were told was a great leader,
is now in Cuba! He took off to Cuba! Bill Clinton wanted Carlos to be head of
the World Trade Organization! I mean, didn't he look at his FBI report? He
looked at everybody else's!
[laughter & applause]
You know, there's other reasons why we've gotta oppose these trade deals,
because they are costing us something more precious than money itself. They
are gradually surrendering the national sovereignty of the United States of
America to institutions of what they call the New World Order. Let me give
you an example: You know, people ask me, "What do you mean, Pat, when you
talk about sovereignty?" and I said, "I mean what those men stood for at
Lexington, and stood for at Concord bridge, against the greatest army in the
world. Terrified, they stood up, and were cut down." I said, "I mean it is
what Travis stood for and what Crockett stood for when they were up there at
the Alamo."
[applause]
And what that simply means is, that in this land,
(these men were saying, when they stood up and fought and died), in this land
and in this country, we will be sovereign under the sovereignty of God alone
and no one else.
[applause]
And yet we see Mr. Al Gore, while at a meeting of
the World Trade Organization, when we lost 16 brave young Americans in Iraq.
He issued a formal statement, saying, "We can be proud those young Americans
died in the service of the United Nations!"
[crowd boos]
Well that's why I am
going to San Diego, to have it written in our platform, that never again will
young Americans be sent into battle except under American officers and to
fight under an American flag!
[standing applause and cheering]
I want to talk to you briefly...
[ more standing applause & cheering]
Let me
talk to you now...
[ more standing applause & cheering]
Don't worry, Pat is
going!
[laughs while applause]
Don't be an extremist!
[crowd laughs]
Let me
talk to you now, about a Texan, a patriot, a Christian, and a soldier named
Michael New.
[applause and cheering]
Let me tell you the story, a story about
this young 23 year old man, American, joined the service of his country, was
sent to Germany, performed admirably in his service, was decorated, and then
Bill Clinton ordered him into Macedonia and told him: "Michael New, you have
to wear UN insignia, you've got to put on a UN helmet and you got to take
orders from UN officers, and you got to take an oath, an oath as a UN
peacekeeper." Now, Michael New looked at that oath, and that oath said, " Our
loyalty to this United Nations unit is above any other oath, or loyalty we
have ever taken."
[crowd boos]
So Michael New said "I can't take that oath,
because I am a soldier in the Army of the United States, and my oath is to
the Constitution of the United States."
[continued applause]
So his commander
in chief, Bill Clinton, had this young Texas patriot court-martialled,
stripped of his rank, and discharged from the service of his country!
[crowd
boos]
But it's not Michael New that ought to be discharged from the service
of his country! It is Bill Clinton who's going to be discharged from the
service of his country!
[applause & cheering]
And I tell ya',
[more cheering]
you know, and when we get that President in there, to replace Bill Clinton, I
think he's going to pardon Michael New, but I am not sure about Bill &
Hillary!
[continued cheering & applause]
I think they've got to answer some
questions to their respective Grand Jury's down there in Arkansas!
[chuckles
while applause]
Like how, for example, did those fingerprints get on those
documents, in the second floor of the White House, that Hillary never
touched?
[chuckles while applause]
And I told them not to let Gordon Liddy in
there!
[laughter]
You know, my friends, four years ago I gave a speech in Houston, that I
didn't think was going to be long remembered. One of the reasons I didn't,
was because they told me, when I asked them when I was going to speak, they
said "You'll be speaking right after Alan Keyes", (and I said, "Oh , no!"),
and they said, "right before Ronald Reagan!" How would you like that
assignment?
Well they remembered what I said there, at Houston, the press
did, because we put one right down the smokestack...right down the
smokestack! What did we say? I said there was a cultural war going on in this
country for the soul of America, and that war is about who we are, what we
believe, and what we stand for as people. And I said, "we are engaged in a
battle this fall, in that great cultural struggle in America, in which our
party is on one side and Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are on the other
side." And I said, "If you elect Clinton & Clinton, you'll get women in
combat, you'll get gays in the military, you'll get abortion on demand,
you'll get a government that listens to the militants, and the gay rights
community, but turns a deaf ear to the silent screams of the innocent unborn
in America.
Since that day, 5 million unborn have been put to death in the
abortion mills in the United States. Bill Clinton said he wanted abortions
"safe, legal and rare". Name one thing this man has done to make abortions
rare in America!
So this cultural struggle, and this struggle for the soul of our country is
going to continue, and we are going to repair the mistake America made in
1992, we're going to repair it in 1996 in this country.
[applause]
Our party
is approaching a crossroads, I believe, as our society and country are
approaching a great crossroads. I believe our party that did so many great
things, and fought and won the Cold War...
Now we need a new party, a new
party struggling to be born, and it is the party, I think, that can be the
party of America's future. But to do that we not only gotta know who it is
[that] we're against, we know that, but we've got to know what it is that
we're for.
Our country faces some terrible trials ahead, and people ask us,
"How do we decide on this or that issue?" And I tell them, "Well, we're
heading into the future. We've got two great bulwark documents of the past to
guide us, one of those is The Constitution of the United States and the other
is The Bible, the Old and New Testament."
[cheers and applause]
In there...
[more cheers & applause]
In there, my friends, we have the truths to guide
men's lives, the truths that make men free, and the truth that's crushed to
earth, is gonna rise again. So, y'all do the right thing here, in this great
convention, my friends, remember, this is God's country. That's what we want
to repair and make it again. God's eyes are on us, and equally important, my
friends, the eyes of Texas are upon you. God Bless you all!
[standing
ovation]
