BY NAOMI CRAINE
"Deport Buchanan!" and "Go Pat! Go home!" yelled
protesters as Patrick Buchanan passed by in the Tucson Rodeo
Parade February 22. Campaigning for several days in the
Arizona Republican primary, the ultrarightist candidate ran
into visible opposition all across the state. For the first
time since he launched his bid for the presidency, Buchanan
blinked several times during public appearances.
The New York Times described Buchanan's appearance at the parade. "Mr. Buchanan, conscious of the television cameras recording the event, looked right when the `Racist, Go Home' chants arose from the left, and looked left when the boos arose from the right," the Times reported.
The next day Marciano Murillo, an 18-year-old Mexican- American, challenged Buchanan's anti-immigrant demagogy at a meeting in Gila Bend, Arizona. The rightist declared, "They've got no right just because you have a lousy government down there to walk across the borders of the United States of America, because this is my country."
"They help your economy just as well as any American here helps it," Murillo shot back, standing his ground and arguing with Buchanan. Like Murillo, many of those in the largely Latino groups who turned out to jeer and protest Buchanan were young people. Almost one-fifth of Arizona's population is made up of Chicanos and Mexican immigrants.
In a nationwide telecast on CSPAN, millions saw Buchanan's campaign bus greeted by picketers with raised fists and signs reading, "Nazi! Nazi!"
The same week 7,000 people turned out in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to protest the governor's stance against affirmative action. Buchanan had campaigned against affirmative action in that state and won the Republican caucuses.
Buchanan came in third in the February 27 Arizona primary, close behind Sen. Bob Dole. Publishing tycoon Steve Forbes placed first, with about a third of the vote. Dole won the North and South Dakota primaries the same day. Buchanan finished second in South Dakota and third in North Dakota, behind Forbes. Lamar Alexander, the former governor of Tennessee, came in fourth in all three races.
The growing protests and the slightly poorer showing in the latest round of primaries have not changed Buchanan's course. He is out to win troops to his "movement," as he calls it, not just votes in the primaries.
Buchanan's tone in speaking to his supporters - shown daily on television - makes this clear. After winning the New Hampshire primary, on his way to campaign in other states, Buchanan held his usual meeting with his campaign troops. He told his backers to act without waiting for orders from headquarters. "Mount up, everybody, and ride to the sound of the guns!" he declared.
Speeches to his "Buchanan Brigades" take on a semi- military flavor. Photos in the big-business press show him giving supporters a raised-fist salute or holding a rifle above his head. This attitude serves not only to firm up his cadres but also to scare off those who can be intimidated by the kind of ultrarightist movement he is building.
"Stop calling me names," Buchanan warned his rivals in the Republican primary. "Calm, down folks, because if you keep it up, you make it difficult for me to bring my people home" to support the Republican nominee, he said, reminding Dole, Alexander, and company that while he has one foot in the electoral party machine, the other is in the streets.
Buchanan is frequently charged by other bourgeois politicians and commentators with using "code words" to indicate his racist and anti-Semitic views. He often singles out the Goldman Sachs investment house and Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - both Jewish names - for attack. He demagogically tells "José" not to come into the United States. He refers to United Nations secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali as "Boo-Boo Ghali." Buchanan generally replies to the charge of using "code words" by denying he is racist or anti-Semitic, but in a way that leaves the matter open for interpretation.
Fake `friend' of workers
Buchanan presents himself as speaking in the interests of
the working class, against both big business and the top
union bureaucracy. In a February 25 interview on the "Face
the Nation" television show, he talked about his attitude
toward trade unions. Explaining that he supports the bosses'
"right" to permanently replace strikers, he pointed to the
1990-91 strike at the New York Daily News. "These fellows
went on strike and some of them wanted to kill the
newspaper," he said.
When it fits his "America First" nationalist rhetoric, though, strikes are all right. "On the issue like Boeing," he said, referring to last year's walkout, "where those fellows are striking because Boeing's moving their assembly plant to China, I'm with the workers 100 percent."
Buchanan opposes raising the minimum wage. "The minimum wage in Mexico, before devaluation, was 58 cents an hour," he told Brownstein. "You raise it to $6 an hour in the United States and that's like tilting the table. All your low-wage, less skilled jobs will automatically be tumbling into Mexico."
AFL-CIO president John Sweeney recently denounced Buchanan's views on many issues and said the Republican politician is only pretending to be a friend of labor. In the same breath, however, Sweeney gave credence to the lie that Buchanan speaks in the interests of the exploited. At a February 22 meeting of the union federation's executive council in Bal Harbour, Florida, Sweeney described Buchanan as "a Presidential candidate who talks the talk, but won't walk the walk," according to the New York Times.
"Listen, we don't get the boys at Bal Harbour," Buchanan told reporters in Arizona in response. "We are getting the working men and women of America.... Senator Dole represents the board room, or the business round table. And some of these other fellows, like Mr. Clinton, they represent the hierarchy of big labor. We represent the working men and women."
Not an `isolationist' foreign policy
Buchanan used the "Face the Nation" appearance to stake
out an aggressive stance on Cuba. He also made clear his
position on the U.S.-led war against Iraq, which has been
described as "isolationist," by saying, "I felt that the
regime in Kuwait was not worth the life of a single Marine. I
felt we should have drawn the line in Saudi Arabia." At the
same time he praised then-president George Bush, saying he
"fought that war the way Vietnam should have been fought,
which is to go through, achieve your purpose for victory, pay
no attention to the critics."
Buchanan has also called for sending the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet to patrol the waters between China and Taiwan as a threat against Beijing. He says U.S. troops should not be in Bosnia; in the past he has instead spoken for defending "Christian, Catholic Croatia."
Another fervent theme of Buchanan's campaign is opposition to abortion rights. "I don't care about the circumstances of the child's conception," he told a Right-to- Life breakfast of nearly 1,000 in Phoenix. "You want to execute somebody in the case of rape, execute the rapist and let the unborn child live." Buchanan is firmly standing by a campaign aide, Mike Farris, who is under attack for attending a dinner to support people who shot doctors who provide abortions.
International reaction to Buchanan
"Heil Buchanan," said the Edinburgh Scotsman in response
to Buchanan's victory in New Hampshire.
Other bourgeois newspapers and politicians around the world had similar, if slightly less blunt, reactions. "Even the most reactionary financial barons consider Bill Clinton a blessing compared to the man who would build a wall around the entire U.S.A. to `secure' American jobs," said a commentary in Verdens Gang, the largest Norwegian daily.
Buchanan's "attitude should worry every person who has analyzed his actions and statements," commented Mexican congressman Carlos Reta Martínez.
The U.S. candidate is now increasingly compared to the ultranationalist, fascist-minded politicians Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Russia. Zhirinovsky himself congratulated Buchanan as a "comrade and brother-in- arms," suggesting they both "set aside places in U.S. and Russian territory to deport" Jews. Buchanan rejected Zhirinovsky's invitation.
There is considerable debate in bourgeois circles in the United States on how to deal with Buchanan's rise and popularity. While many liberals are trying to "expose" Buchanan's racist, sexist, antigay, and anti-Semitic views, a lot of conservatives are crying, "He's a leftist!"
Buchanan "sounds like someone from the AFL-CIO," said Stuart Butler, director of domestic policy studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
"In the view of many conservatives... Buchanan has suddenly positioned himself as America's leading critic of unfettered capitalism," stated an article titled "Patrick Buchanan...Liberal?" in the business section of the February 23 Washington Post. Rush Limbaugh, one of the most widely listened to right-wing radio talk show hosts, said, "Pat Buchanan is not a conservative. He's a populist."
From Arizona, Buchanan's campaign moved on to Georgia, where he continued to be dogged by his new problem
- protesters. Twenty-five people demonstrated outside his campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia, February 27. Frank Snelson, a 25-year-old Black man, leaned into traffic from the sidewalk with signs he had written up just before the rally. One said, "Buchanan is a jackass." The other read, "Keep abortion legal."
Snelson explained, "I've never been to a protest or anything before, but when I heard he was going to be here I thought, this is just too close to home. I've got to come out to this."
Jamie Smith, a law student, came to protest along with her sister. "I'm here representing everyone who should be here," she said, "the gay community, Jewish community, Black community. Buchanan should be wearing a sheet."
Ellen Haywood in Atlanta contributed to this article.