THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 12, 1996 TAG: 9603120270
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Seeing that Bob Dole, not he, will become the GOP nominee for president, Pat Buchanan has lowered his sights, slightly.
All he wants to do is reshape the party in his image, write its platform, select the vice presidential nominee and trumpet the convention in San Diego.
Buchanan rules out as nominees New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman and retired Army Gen. Colin Powell, who are moderate pro-choice.
``If Bob Dole puts in the line of succession for the Republican Party leadership, a pro-choice Rockefeller Republican . . . many of my people will walk out no matter what I do,'' Buchanan has said.
To recruit Powell, Dole would do anything up to substitution of ``Old MacDonald Had a Farm'' as the national anthem. And they'd win.
Buchanan insists that if he can bring his folks in, they will change the GOP ``because Bob Dole represents a generation passing on, an old calcified group which doesn't reflect middle America.'' His people, Buchanan says, want a new Republican Party to be born, ``and I'm going to mid-wife that party!''
He's an exclamation point, he says. ``Dole is a question mark.''
For just a flicker after New Hampshire, he felt he could ``break through,'' but in South Carolina the powers rallied behind Dole. ``They had old Strom Thurmond carry him across the line,'' Buchanan said.
Buchanan, who delights in coining epithets, pouts at Dole, calling him ``extreme,'' and points to a Dole aide, saying in Time magazine they'd ``win ugly.''
As a pundit stirring controversy, Buchanan has been accused of being anti-Semitic. Asked on the air about that, columnist William Safire, his co-worker in the Nixon White House, replied that on personal relationships Buchanan gets along with just about anybody.
``But on a scale of one to 10, if you take the great majority of Americans and, say on anti-Semitism, they don't have any, it's one,'' Safire said. ``And you take Hitler at 10, and you say Farrakhan is seven, I'd put Buchanan four or five.''
A week later, on ``Meet the Press,'' Tim Russert asked Buchanan for his reaction to Safire.
``Well, I think that is really a slander. Adolf Hitler, the greatest anti-Semite in history, engaged in mass murder; Mr. Farrakhan rants against Catholics and Jews in particular and others to a degree that all of us find appalling,'' Buchanan said. ``And yet Mr. Safire compares me to those people. I think the comparison is not only invalid, it is outrageous.''
Russert observed that Buchanan had referred to Congress as Israeli-occupied territory.
Congress, Buchanan said, ``has not stood up, in many cases, to the Israeli lobby when they demand foreign aid far beyond what I think is proper. The amen corner of the Israeli defense ministry, Mr. Safire's a member of good standing in that.'' On a recent Brinkley show, William Bennett said Buchanan wasn't qualified to be president and muttered, ``He's a journalist.''
That brought peals of laughter from Cokie Roberts.
Buchanan forges on, supported by anti-abortionists and thousands who fear mass layoffs in corporate America, a new side of free enterprise. They want their stories told no matter who wins what. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Pat Buchanan
by CNB