Speaking September 12 on the NBC TV program "Meet the Press," Buchanan denounced the Republicans as a "Xerox copy" of the Democrats and charged that the Republican contest was "closed and rigged" with the well-financed candidacies of Gov. George Bush of Texas and Malcolm Forbes Jr.
"I think what we have here is a one-party system in Washington, D.C., that is masquerading as a two-party system, and I think what we need is a real opposition party," he stated. He said he will announce his decision on whether to run in the Reform Party in mid-October.
Buchanan's move, one more sign of the coming decomposition of the two-party system in the United States, has become a major issue in an election campaign where the two leading contenders, Democrat Albert Gore and Republican George W. Bush, have raised no differences of substance on domestic or foreign policy issues so far. President William Clinton has set the tone for the campaign with his sending of U.S. troops to East Timor to bolster Washington's imperialist interests in Asia and the Pacific, which — with the exception of Buchanan — has won bipartisan support.
Reiterating his America First stance on a September 18 television talk show, Buchanan stated that his "central disagreements" with the Republican Party were what he termed "its appeasement of Communist China along with Clinton and Gore" as well as the two parties' "interventionist" foreign policy.
Two other major disagreements, the ultrarightist added, were his protectionist opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and his argument that "illegal immigrant needs to be stopped cold."
Buchanan staked out these themes when he ran for the Republican nomination in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. His impending break with the Republican Party today registers the fact that this vehicle no longer serves his aims. Given the current level of the class struggle and political polarization, which is only in its initial stages, no significant section of the ruling class has thrown its support behind the rightist politician.
The current led by Buchanan is the main organizing center for incipient American fascism today. Feeding on middle-class insecurities bred by the growing capitalist disorder, Buchanan has kept one foot in traditional bourgeois politics while seeking to recruit cadres to build a movement in the streets that can eventually impose radical solutions to protect the interest of capital at a time of crisis.
Buchanan's "culture war" targets entire layers of the working class — immigrants, workers receiving social welfare payments, working women who raise children on their own, gays, and others — to be blamed for the capitalist social crisis. His radicalism pits human beings against each other and reinforces the most savage competitiveness and dog-eat-dog values of capitalist society.
Raising the banner of economic nationalism, Buchanan has increasingly resorted to anticapitalist and national socialist demagogy. He rails against the "plutocrats" and "globalist elite" who he says are betraying the "American worker." On this basis he recently picked up the endorsement of officials of the Independent Steelworkers Union, which organizes workers at the Weirton Steel plant in economically devastated Weirton, West Virginia.
Buchanan has been promoting his new book on foreign policy, A Republic, Not an Empire. Erroneously described as "isolationist" by conservative and liberal opponents, the book reaffirms Buchanan's stance that Washington should avoid "imperial overstretch" in international conflicts and only go to war against its enemies once it's strong enough to win a decisive victory.
The book recently sparked a controversy over his views on World War II. Far from being isolationist as his critics allege, Buchanan argues in his books that London, Paris, and Washington should have let the Hitler-led German regime attack and weaken the Soviet Union, or overthrow it, before going to war against Berlin. Buchanan blames "the British empire" for supposedly dragging Washington into the war prematurely. This view is consistent with Buchanan's stance of opposing recent U.S. military intervention in the Gulf War and Yugoslavia on the basis that first "America must retrench, America must rearm." The ultrarightist argues that the "war at home" must be won first and that when the government sends forces abroad it must use overwhelming power to guarantee victory.
The Reform Party was put together following Ross Perot's 1992 election campaign, another new feature in U.S. politics. Perot, who won an unprecedented 19 percent of the vote in those elections, tapped into the conviction of millions that the established capitalist politicians are incapable of addressing the social crisis. As a Bonapartist political figure, he presented himself as a leader standing above classes and traditional parties who could "cut through the gridlock" and bring stability with an iron hand.
Perot's radical demagogy appealed particularly to fearful middle-class layers and workers aspiring to be part of the middle class. He offered a reactionary social program, from scapegoating Mexican immigrants for unemployment to proposing to end the character of Social Security as a universal social right guaranteed to all.
In the 1996 campaign Perot's electoral prospects narrowed, and the coalition around him became more overtly ideological and right-wing. The election of Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota, however, has given the Reform Party a new boost and somewhat broader appeal. Ventura, like Perot, is a Bonapartist politician who promotes the image of a strongman-like figure not beholden to the corrupt "Establishment."
The rhetoric of Ventura, Perot, and their supporters shares with Buchanan the politics of middle-class resentment, anti-elite demagogy, and economic nationalism. This makes the Reform Party a vehicle through which Buchanan believes he can advance his longer-term efforts of recruiting cadres to his incipient fascist movement — the "Buchanan Brigades." His probe to capture the presidential nomination in the Reform Party is a concrete manifestation of the fact that Bonapartism greases the skids for fascism.
"Buchanan's economic views resonate in our party," declared Paul Truax, who directs the Reform Party's operations in eight southwestern states. "He does a wonderful job standing up for the American worker," said Daron Libby, Reform Party head in New Hampshire.
One of Buchanan's main boosters inside the Reform Party is Patrick Choate, a Perot ally and his 1996 running mate. Choate co-authored a book with Perot during the 1992 election campaign condemning NAFTA and wrote another protectionist book, an anti-Japanese tract called Agents of Influence.
Days after his nomination on the Perot ticket in 1996, Choate was the guest on a TV talk show co-hosted by Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's former press secretary, and Bay Buchanan, the sister and campaign manager of Patrick Buchanan during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, which the ultrarightist had by that time lost to Robert Dole. Bay Buchanan went out of her way to ask Choate friendly questions, especially about his chauvinist views on immigration and protectionism. Toward the end of the show, she presented Choate with a big "Go Pat, Go!" sign and offered him 10,000 copies left over from Buchanan's campaign. She held up for the TV camera one of those signs with "Buchanan" scratched out but readable and with "Choate" written in above it. Choate responded that he was honored to accept it.
Another new fan of Buchanan is Lenora Fulani, former leader of the New Alliance Party, a middle-class sect with fascist-like elements that years ago shed its "leftist" rhetoric and eventually entered the Reform Party. Fulani recently said on CNN that she could overlook differences she has with the ultrarightist politician on gay rights and the right to abortion because he "can play a role as a unifier." Buchanan, on the other hand, has made it clear he will not back down from his anti-choice and other culture war positions.
While some in the Ventura faction of the Reform Party have been hostile to Buchanan's bid, even John Gargan, who won the party's chairmanship with Ventura's backing, differed with the Minnesota governor. "Buchanan's position on all the 'America First' concepts certainly fit in nicely with Reform concepts," Gargan said. "We are for a balanced budget, keeping jobs in America, tightening up on immigration, elimination of the influence of lobbyists and special interests."
Ventura, who has suggested he might run for president in 2004, has expressed the most adamant opposition to Buchanan competing for the political leadership of the Reform Party. Ventura is promoting real estate billionaire Donald Trump to run for the party's nomination against Buchanan. Unlike politicians like Buchanan who espouse a broad range of rightist views, Ventura has taken diverse stands — from supporting a woman's right to choose abortion and legalization of prostitution and drugs — traditionally not positions of the political right — to cutting state-subsidized day care and replacing income tax with a national sales tax. But while Ventura's demagogy is designed to draw support from a wide range of voters with contradictory political views and conflicting class interests, the thrust of his victory in Minnesota and the course of his administration has aided the employers' offensive against working people and given a boost to rightist forces.
For his part, Buchanan has avoided antagonistic remarks about Ventura, calling him a "very impressive man." Buchanan dismissed Trump saying, "We're becoming a plutocracy…and he's got billions of dollars."
In line with his demagogy painting him as the defender of workers and the "little man," Buchanan's supporters have floated the possibility of Teamsters union president James Hoffa as his running mate. "Hoffa has not said no in advance," columnist Robert Novak reported in the September 16 Chicago Sun-Times.
Much of the commentary by liberal, conservative, and leftist critics of Buchanan has dismissed him as an inconsequential fringe element. Charles Lane of the liberal New Republic predicted that "his flameout should be quick and comical." Sam Tanenhaus wrote in the September 20 Wall Street Journal, "This election may not be Mr. Buchanan's last. But it may well be the last in which anyone pays him much attention. Mr. Buchanan has it backward. He has not rejected the Republican Party. It has rejected him."
The sarcasm is misplaced. The incipient fascist politician is not out to win bourgeois popularity polls, and there is no reason to think he will simply fade away. He aims to attract cadres to a reactionary popular movement that will continue to be fueled by the capitalist social crisis itself. Patrick Buchanan and his thuggish Buchanan Brigades are a deadly enemy of the working class and farmers, and will have to be defeated in struggle by the labor movement and its allies.
Front page (for this issue) |
Home |
Text-version home