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The Conservative Challenge of Pat Buchanan
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20418 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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3 / 1992 |
1,884 Words |
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Ralph Z. Hallow
Ralph Z. Hallow is a political reporter and senior national
correspondent for the Washington Times. |
What makes Pat run? That's what his friends inside Washington's beltway and potential supporters around the country have been asking ever since Patrick Buchanan, the conservative columnist and television commentator, who never sought an elective office before, decided to start at the top by challenging George Bush for the 1992 Republican presidential nomination.
The question of why Buchanan, 53, a Catholic and Republican who served loyally in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, would set out to politically embarrass and possibly undermine the reelection of an incumbent Republican president is, as much as anything else, what the success of his candidacy hangs on.
"I am not sure in his heart of hearts Pat Buchanan wants to go all the way," said Dick Simoneau, who owns a delicatessen in the little town of Lancaster, in the conservative north country of New Hampshire. Registered as an independent, Simoneau has looked carefully at all the candidates in both parties, met some of them, and likes best the things Buchanan has to say.
Simoneau wonders if Buchanan is truly serious about taking the nomination away from George Bush, or is merely trying to force him and his administration's policies to the political right, where he thinks they ought to be. "If Buchanan is serious," Simoneau muses, "then whey does his New Hampshire campaign seem so amateurish and disorganized?"
"When I call down to Manchester (where the campaign is headquartered) and ask them to send Buchanan literature up here so I can distribute it to customers, they are very nice but they never get back to me," said Simoneau.
His complaint about campaign disorganization is echoed around the country by potential Buchanan supporters. The fact is that Pat Buchanan got in the race late, had little time to put together an organization in New Hampshire or nationally, and found, to no one's surprise that the top campaign professionals with 50 state election experience, were not about to risk the ire of a powerful Republican president and his extensive national organization by signing on with Buchanan in the pursuit of what seemed to them his impossible dream.
Even if his campaign were well-oiled, the perception might linger among political sophisticates and skeptics in New Hampshire and elsewhere that Pat Buchanan got into the race simply to send Bush a message
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