That renowned civil libertarian Patrick J. Buchanan ("We must…restore to citizens…the freedom to clean up the cultural pollution poisoning the hearts and minds of our children") is now said to be mulling a serious switch to the Reform Party and a try for its 2000 presidential nomination.
His sister Angela (Bay) Buchanan, his top political advisor, says Buchanan is most likely to decide on the switch in about a month. She says there's a big enough call around the country for a third party candidate to make the switch a strong opportunity, but she also says she won't recommend Buchanan make the move unless it's "viable and practical," according to Reuters.
Financially, it could be a considerable boost for a Buchanan campaign. The Reform Party's 2000 nominee would be entitled to $12.5 million in federal matching funds thanks to Perot's 9 percent showing in the 1996 election.
Buchanan has been an influential public figure ever since his unwavering performance in front of Congressional Watergate panels while serving as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon. The one-time St. Louis Globe-Democrat editorial writer has since been a syndicated columnist and co-host of CNN's Crossfire, with a stint as Ronald Reagan's communications director during Reagan's second term.
He's making his third run for the White House, but his fifth-place showing in the recent Iowa straw poll has had him mulling options away from the Republican Party. Right now, though, he's getting ready for a book tour in late September.
And according to his sister, he'll talk to Reform Party founder and two-time White House candidate H. Ross Perot, who hasn't yet ruled out a bid for the 2000 Reform nomination - but hasn't said he'll try for it, either. And he's said to like Buchanan.
A number of Reform leaders have been pressing for a Buchanan candidacy, but Minnesota governor Jesse (The Body) Ventura isn't one of them. Ventura, the party's highest-ranking government official, believes Buchanan's social agenda doesn't fit with the party's fiscal emphases, according to Reuters, although Buchanan's positions on trade and term limits knit with the party's line.
Buchanan's stands on social issues - anti-abortion, anti-pornography and adult entertainment, and his rubric about "the struggle for the soul of America" - appeal to a sizeable conservative contingent in the Republican Party, but his isolationist-style foreign policy and his anti-free trade image have kept him from picking up a larger following in elections among GOP stalwarts.
And Texas governor George W. Bush, the current front-runner for the GOP nomination next year, is said to have appealed to Buchanan to stay in the Republican Party's ranks.
