Buchanan Says His Opponents Are Echoing His Ideas

Aired February 19, 1996 2:22 pm

JUDY WOODRUFF, Anchor: When Phil Gramm endorsed Bob Dole on Sunday, he said, 'There is no room for racism in this party. That was a not-very-veiled remark aimed at you- at Pat Buchanan. What was your reaction when you heard that?

PATRICK BUCHANAN (R), Presidential Candidate: A little sad. Phil Gramm's campaigned all year long saying Pat Buchanan's a wonderful conservative, he's a great fellow, but I'm the conservative who can win and our real opponent is Bob Dole. And so, we beat Phil Gramm five to one in Alaska. We trounced him in Louisiana. He ran fifth in Iowa; I ran second, and he comes out and says something like that. I think it says more about Senator Gramm than it does about Pat Buchanan.

You know, these are the charges that were used against Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and now they are being thrown up against me. What's sad is that it comes from inside our own Republican Party.

Let me tell you, we're on the cover of Time magazine, Judy. Inside here, Dole's people say, `We've got to win it ugly.' You know what that means? That means we can't win it on ideas and issues. Buchanan's got the message, the campaign, he's rolling. We got to smear him. We got to win it ugly, and I think it's very, very sad that the establishment of the Republican Party is in such straits that it has got to resort to that about someone who spent eight years in the White House, who knows those fellows as friends, who has been associated with them, been in countless battles with them, to use that kind of rhetoric and language. It really has no place in politics and I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

WOODRUFF: Let me read to you some comments made by a group of voters we interviewed over the weekend here in New Hampshire. These are all registered Republicans, planning to vote in the Republican primary on Tuesday. Now, these are people who are looking at the candidate, some of them still haven't made up their mind.

Let me just read to you one comment. 'Pat Buchanan scares me.' This is a woman. She said, 'I find him very literate.' She said, 'I admire him for sticking with his beliefs, but I'm afraid of someone for who there is no gray.' She said, 'With him on social issues, like abortion, prayer in the schools, and guns - it's black or white.'

What do you say to a voter like that?

BUCHANAN: I would say, I'm for voluntary prayer in the public schools. Your child will not have to pray. With regard to Second Amendment rights, the founding fathers believed in those; I believe in those. With regard to abortion, I believe it's wrong, and I believe a woman should have, I think- many women go into this because they are abandoned or they are afraid or deserted, and go into these things. I think the woman is a second victim in abortion. But I believe it's wrong. I simply believe there is never any justification for killing an innocent human being. I just do not- I believe that's everywhere and always wrong. I don't why people should be afraid when the position I hold, Judy, is the same position held 20 years ago by Mario Cuomo, Teddy Kennedy, and Jesse Jackson.

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WOODRUFF: But, all right, let me just cite another concern. This is another woman. She said, 'If Pat Buchanan is the Republican nominee, I'd hate to admit this, but I'd vote for Bill Clinton.' She said- this is- she's quoting what some others- she says, `I want the focus on government spending.' She said, 'I don't want a fence built around United States. I don't want the United States to retreat from the rest of the world.'

BUCHANAN: You mean she wants to focus on government spending, and she's going to vote for Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton? This is national health care? Are you kidding?

WOODRUFF: I'm quoting to you what a voter in- a Republican voter in New Hampshire said.

BUCHANAN: You should quote some of those wonderful Buchanan voters, Judy. But let me say this, with regard to the fence along the border, the government has a constitutional obligation to defend the states from foreign invasion. Ronald Reagan said ten years ago, 'A country that doesn't control its borders, isn't a country any more.' Bill Clinton has begun a security fence along the border. I think they are going to call it the Buchanan/Clinton fence. I mean, they are taking all of these ideas we articulated in 1992, and they are echoing me. Lamar Alexander is an old friend. He's talking about a new armed force.

WOODRUFF: But these people are saying the United States needs to be part of the rest of the world, and the impression they have about what Pat Buchanan wants to do is to close the United States off,

BUCHANAN: I can see how they can get a false impression like that, Judy, but, Pat Buchanan wants to trade with the rest of the world. I want to sell more. We have a $200 billion merchandise trade deficit. That is a mark of failure; that's a mark that we are losing the trade battles. We need to increase exports of goods and stop exporting our best jobs. This is the problem up in New Hampshire - our good paying jobs are being sent abroad, and real wages are falling, even though everybody's employed. Nobody will address this issue, and they will all run around searching through the archives to find what 25-year-old Pat Buchanan wrote to Richard Nixon.

WOODRUFF: Well, final comment from again one of these voters, `I respect his views, but we need a president who's going to bring people together. Politics is about consensus.'

BUCHANAN: It sure is. Who do you think can bring the Perot voters home to the Republican Party? You name- you think Bob Dole can bring them home? He was for NAFTA and GATT and all those sell out deals. He's big for the Mexican bail-out. They protected Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Goldman Sachs.

I can bring the Perot voters home. Nineteen million people walked away from George Bush, right out of the Reagan coalition. Judy, this whole campaign's about bringing them back and telling them we're going to have Republican Party that embraces 60 percent of the country. Just like Reagan's party did in 1984, and Richard Nixon's did in 1972, and I was a junior architect of that great coalition.

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