
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 21, 1995                   TAG: 9503210110
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Houston Chronicle
DATELINE: MANCHESTER, N.H.                                LENGTH: Medium

BUCHANAN MAKES IT OFFICIAL

Conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan announced his candidacy for president Monday, vowing to seal off the U.S. border with the National Guard and wage cultural war against those he claims are poisoning the nation's youth ``against their Judeo-Christian heritage.''

Buchanan declared his bid to seek the Republican nomination in the same state where he waged a surprisingly strong campaign against then-President Bush three years ago.

His announcement speech, to a crowd of about 200 at the Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences, featured familiar themes, including a denunciation of free trade agreements and a need to restore morality to the nation.

Buchanan called for a stronger defense and chastised the nation's leaders for doing nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration, claiming they are ``fearful of being called names.''

``I will do what is needed to defend the borders of the United States, even if it means sending the National Guard all along our Southern frontier,'' he said.

Buchanan also repeated a controversial theme that alienated party moderates at the 1992 GOP Convention in Houston, when he vowed to ``fight and win the cultural war for the soul of America.''

He said the minds of schoolchildren are ``being poisoned against their Judeo-Christian heritage, against America's heroes and American history, against the values of faith, family and country.'' Children, he said ``are being indoctrinated in moral relativism, and the propaganda of an anti-Western ideology.''

He said he would close the Department of Education and that ``parents' rights will be paramount in our public schools again.''

Buchanan pledged to ``use the bully pulpit of the presidency of the United States ... to defend American traditions and the values of faith, family and country from any and all directions, and together, we will chase purveyors of sex and violence back beneath the rocks whence they came.''

Although he is a staunch abortion opponent, Buchanan avoided mention of the contentious issue that threatens to divide the GOP.

Buchanan's speech was briefly interrupted by members of a Jewish group from New York, who waved signs alleging that Buchanan was a racist and comparing him to David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who ran for governor in Louisiana.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB