THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603230009
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Ralph Reed, voice of the Christian Coalition, finds it convenient to blame the ``liberal media'' for branding Pat Buchanan as a political extremist. That honor really belongs to Bob Dole, who has had the good sense to take Buchanan's raucous rhetoric, name it properly and turn it against him. While endorsing Dole, the Coalition indirectly demands from him a truth-in-labeling exemption for Buchanan.
What surprises is how long such a spoiler and name-caller has managed to throw wrenches into the Republican works. ``It just infuriates me (and other) people who sweat for the party year after year,'' says Patrick Durante, a Republican worker in Illinois. ``A guy like Buchanan, never run for anything, never did the work, comes in and borrows the party for his own purposes, then he loses and tells us, `I'm gonna take my ball and go home.' '' Having gathered one delegate for every 10 of Dole's, Buchanan did signal after last week's primaries that he might be pacified if Dole embraced him as running mate.
The right rap against the ``liberal media'' is that it has tended to shrug off Buchanan's wretched excesses while conservative journals have responded. ``Commentary and the American Spectator condemned him as sinister,'' according to conservative author David Frum, and ``the Wall Street Journal treated him as a joke.'' This was on the eve of Buchanan's effort to unseat George Bush, and at about the same time that William Buckley, father of modern conservatism, concluded in National Review that he found it impossible to defend Buchanan against a charge of anti-Semitism.
The code words and winks of racism are as familiar to Buchanan as breathing in and breathing out. During the Nixon years when racial tension was sky-high, Buchanan told a White House associate he was working up a speech for Vice President Spiro Agnew that would ``tear the scab off the issue of race in this country.'' He called Martin Luther King ``immoral, evil and a demagogue.''
Ronald Reagan's press secretary, Larry Speakes, wrote in his memoir that he hadn't ``encountered anyone like Pat since I had to deal with the (segregation-forever) White Citizen's Councils in my days as a Mississippi newspaper editor.'' Those items come from a compilation by Newsweek which also noted Dan Quayle's point that ``all too often'' Buchanan crossed the ``firm line between the political cutting edge and what is objectionable.''
Dole, of course, may have had other matters in mind when he said Buchanan was peddling extreme views. Aside from the merits of protectionism, advocacy of high tariff walls in an economy geared to exports is an extreme view. So was Buchanan's opposition to the Persian Gulf war, which he saw as a creation of the government of Israel and ``its amen corner in the Congress.'' And so has been a tendency to depict immigrants as ``Zulus'' or as a collective ``Jose.''
What sort of presidential candidate chooses such speech and behaviors? One who comes South to wave the Confederate battle flag and to pick at old veins of anger and resentment, and goes West to don a black hat and brandish weapons above his head as if the office sought was generalissimo of some cornfield militia. He should not have been surprised that exit polls indicated clear majorities of voters in Florida and Texas found him ``too extreme.''
If not extremism, what drew to his side the likes of (1) David Duke, the former Kluxer whose followers, according to Phil Gramm, accounted for Buchanan's victory in Louisiana? And (2) Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the bellicose Russian presidential contender, who suggested to Buchanan that they could cooperate in deporting Jews from both the United States and Russia?
As he rushed to repulse that suggestion, did Buchanan wonder what (or who?) put the idea in the Russian's head? A skilled and talented word-smith, Buchanan cannot claim his language is betraying him anymore than the bully in him can claim credibly that he is being picked on. The ``extremist'' tag will begin to fade on the very day that Buchanan decides to speak with a civil tongue. He could begin by substituting ``Senator Dole'' for ``Beltway Bob'' as he continues to insinuate that Dole ought to give him the vice-presidential nomination because (fat chance!) he could ``bring home'' the Perot vote. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB