-Caveat Lector- <<A little object lesson in how your national leaders do (and don't) get (s)elected ... A<>E<>R >> "" In a final revelation, the character playing the president says: "All the words I've spoken were said to people who I saw as hating me. Politics is not about getting people to love you. It's about getting people to hate your opponent." "" ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Dear Brigade, "[M]odern politics goes beyond simply acknowledging differences of opinion or grudgingly accepting someone's departure from one of the two major parties. To keep Buchanan's supporters and votes in the GOP, they had to be separated from Buchanan. Accordingly, two leading conservative magazines, the Weekly Standard and National Review, have tried to kick Buchanan out of the conservative moment -- claiming that true conservatives support free trade and internationalism... Others have gone further. Rather than debate the issues Buchanan raised, they chose to demonize Buchanan. Their primary vehicle was his new book on foreign policy: A Republic, Not an Empire... " GO PAT GO!!!!!!!!!! Linda ------------------------------------- Intellectual Capital Opinions http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue310/item6835.asp A Victim of Slander by Pat Choate Thursday, October 14, 1999 For more than 30 years, Patrick J. Buchanan has been a central fixture in the American political establishment, serving as aide to two presidents (Nixon and Reagan), writing four best-selling books and hosting "Crossfire," CNN's most popular and profitable show. For years, the national media widely distributed Buchanan's column, and establishment audiences constantly sought his views on the lecture circuit. Most leading conservatives know him socially, repeatedly inviting Buchanan and his wife to their homes and going to theirs. Buchanan's place inside that establishment, moreover, was not threatened by his 1992 and 1996 presidential bids, despite his divergent positions, largely because he never had a realistic chance of winning the GOP nomination. Republican leaders would never permit someone with Buchanan's views to be their candidate for president. But so long as he remained a Republican, the GOP could harvest the votes of his supporters -- the old political bait and switch. But for bait and switch to succeed, a degree of finesse is required. By 1999 GOP leaders have proven themselves desperate to pick a candidate who could win them back control of the White House. With that anxiety, the GOP leadership has shown their claws, an unattractive sight by any measure. The fix is in The GOP insiders have selected Texas Gov. George W. Bush as their man. Consequently, he has got virtually unlimited contributions. By contrast and in political parlance, the rest of the candidates have been financially starved, regardless of how worthy they might be, into submission, leaving only billionaire publisher Steve Forbes to wage a token battle for the nomination In this coronation process, the ideas and policies of the candidates matter so little that there is no debate among them. Ultimately, all that matters to GOP leaders is having a candidate who could win the presidency. They expect all other contenders, of course, to dutifully line up behind the chosen one. The push for Bush is so blatant and the power politics so obvious that it shattered all pretense of an open, fair selection process. Buchanan, or anyone else, who wants to change existing GOP orthodoxy, has no chance for leadership, and they know it. Protest could be lethal. In early 1999, an example was made of Sen. Bob Smith (I-NH) when he bolted the GOP. Old friends suddenly became foes, and the party that Smith faithfully served for decades denounced him in the crudest terms. Getting Pat The same fate threatens to befall Buchanan. Yet, Buchanan has an advantage. He is a man of ideas. He reads history. He writes books and debates philosophy. He cares about policies. For him to passively accept the intellectual and political paralysis implicit in Bush's candidacy -- and even worse, a Bush presidency, would be to deny all that. Fortunately for Buchanan, a path to the presidency exists that is not through the GOP and Democratic nominations -- the Reform Party whose platform is close to that of Buchanan's. Moreover, the party's positions on social issues are libertarian -- that is, the Reform Party's members respect the positions of the candidate and a specific set of beliefs is neither a requirement nor a barrier to nomination as the party's standard bearer. In the summer of 1999, Buchanan began to consider changing parties. As this became known, the GOP initially courted him to remain a Republican and urge his supporters to back Bush. Nevertheless, as time passed and the GOP leaders saw Buchanan seriously considering a party shift, they began to punish him -- just as they had Smith. Former GOP Chairman Rich Bond, for instance, openly asked Buchanan to leave the GOP. "A good riddance," he claimed. Others did the same. However, modern politics goes beyond simply acknowledging differences of opinion or grudgingly accepting someone's departure from one of the two major parties. To keep Buchanan's supporters and votes in the GOP, they had to be separated from Buchanan. Accordingly, two leading conservative magazines, the Weekly Standard and National Review, have tried to kick Buchanan out of the conservative moment -- claiming that true conservatives support free trade and internationalism. Others have gone further. Rather than debate the issues Buchanan raised, they chose to demonize Buchanan. Their primary vehicle was his new book on foreign policy: A Republic, Not an Empire. The charge of the pundits The problem these critics face, however, is that Buchanan's view of history and events is acceptable to many leading historians, both here and elsewhere. Unable to take damaging quotations directly from Buchanan's book, his critics chose to fabricate new positions for him and then use their concoctions to smear him. What has made this slander much more powerful is that it came from prize-winning pundits writing in some of the nation's most prestigious publications. For instance, A.M. Rostenthal wrote in The New York Times (Sept. 24, 1999), "His new book does not hide his belief that it would have been better if Nazi Germany had won the war." Yet, Buchanan neither said nor inferred any such thing in the book. William Safire, another New York Times columnist, told a "Meet the Press" audience (Sept. 26, 1999): "And now with this new book, calculated for his campaign, essentially saying that Hitler was Mr. Nice Guy and all we had to do was let him defeat the Russians and he wouldn't have bothered the Jews of Poland or he wouldn't have bothered the West ... that's nutty." Buchanan, of course, never wrote anything such as this. Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times, wrote on Sept. 28, 1999, "The important story last week was not that Pat Buchanan apologized for Adolph Hitler and held the United States accountable for the Holocaust, but rather that George W. Bush still curries the favor of that anti-Semitic lout." Buchanan, of course, made no such apology, nor did he hold the United States accountable for the Holocaust. Scheer made it all up. Others who piled on in a similar manner include Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, Michael Kelly of the National Journal, academic Garry Wills and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. Unwilling or unable to argue the thesis of Buchanan's book that U.S. foreign policy should be limited to vital national interests, these writers chose to discredit the author. Using their fabrications as evidence, the pundits then labeled Buchanan an anti-Semite, fascist or "Brown-Shirt." The real victim of slander Slander such as this is effective because the pundits have audiences of millions of readers through their newspaper columns. Buchanan will be lucky to get a fraction of that audience to read the book and see what he really wrote. Because Buchanan is a public figure, moreover, these writers can smear him with almost total legal immunity from the libel laws. Political smears, of course, are nothing new in American politics. The process is explained in a new political play now running Off-Off-Broadway, "The Last Temptation of William Jefferson." In the performance, the president and his wife are in couple's therapy, where they review their relationship and career. In a final revelation, the character playing the president says: "All the words I've spoken were said to people who I saw as hating me. Politics is not about getting people to love you. It's about getting people to hate your opponent." And so it is with many of Buchanan's critics. The result is the politics of hate and corruption. Buchanan, of course, is the first victim of these attacks. But so too is the idea of an open, honest presidential debate on national policy. And with that, we all lose. Pat Choate is a Washington-based economist, author and talk-show host, and a contributing editor to IntellectualCapital.com. In 1996 he was the Reform Party's vice-presidential candidate. His e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------- end --------------- Related Links At Buchanan's campaign Web site, you can read his recent defense of his thesis in A Republic, Not an Empire. It also includes excerpts from an interview with British military historian Sir John Keegan on the subject. Read what Buchanan believes on the issues at Issues2000, a nonpartisan Web site dedicated to informing voters about the presidential candidates' views. Read Business Week's take on "How a Buchanan Bid Would Bruise Bush." Jewish World Review columnist Linda Chavez gave her spin on former co- worker Buchanan in the Sept. 29 issue. _____ Are Republicans out of line in their criticisms of Buchanan? Are they attacking him because of his potential electoral threat to their candidate if he bolts to the Reform Party? Will Buchanan jump the GOP ship, and if so, will that change help or hinder his presidential quest? [Post your comments] http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue310/item6835.asp ------------- end --------------- Spread the word -- forward this email across the USA! ********************************************** Don't Miss Out - Join the BRIGADE Email List! To Subscribe-Unsubscribe: Click on/Click off at: http://www.gopatgo2000.org/000-p-brigade-list-subscribe.html *********************************************** Help Pat and the Brigade in our Battle for the White House... Go to: http://www.gopatgo2000.org/000-v-helppat.html *********************************************** Official WebSite for Patrick J. Buchanan for President Web: http://www.gopatgo2000.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 1-703-734-2700 WebMaster - Linda Muller - [EMAIL PROTECTED] 8233 Old Courthouse Road, Suite 200 - Vienna, VA 22182 ********************************************** A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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