Buchanan on the Stump
Can you sell fear without lies?
Write about Buchanan? Are you mad? What kind of suicide mission is that?
If I write about this dangerous extremist populist, his followers will post "abortionist" signs at my home. They'll come in the dead of night in black helicopters and smother my children in their sleep.
I can't write about this guy but if he moves a little more to the right, I could vote for him.
With that said, I must remember I'm a professional. I don't get paid for not writing about people. I've registered the family with the Secret Witness program and borrowed an armored personnel carrier from Dupont. Now for the meat of this thing.
The Buchanan campaign is succeeding with two major strategies: issues no one wants to talk about and selling fear.
Issues like abortion and drugs have been talked to death and most people just don't want to hear the same arguments over and over again. These kind of issues have been run into the ground so bad most radio talk show hosts won't even let them on the air any more. The population has settled into three basic positions "Agree or I'll kill you," "I'll resist to my last dying breath" or "I kill myself if I hear another word about it." Most people just keep quiet because any position gets you more enemies than friends.
Pat Buchanan was broken this silence and has about 25-30% of the Republican party saying, "At last, a politician who speaks for me." Unfortunately, he also has 70-75% of the party demanding his head on a spike.
The second major component of the Buchanan campaign is fear. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see fear sells. Look at the media.
You don't hear, "All's right with the world. Film at eleven." It's always something like "Plague loose in your neighborhood. Tune in tonight for tips that might just save your life." Think about it, which show is going to get the ratings?
Politicians have been using fear for years. Clinton ran on fear of the economy. Carter ran on fear of the Washington establishment. Nixon ran on fear of the Vietnam war. Buchanan is running on fear of the future, your children's, your job's and your country's. His opponents are fighting back with fear of Buchanan.
So why has Buchanan got the rest of the country running around like their heads are on fire and their ass holes are catching? Because his campaign threatens to bring down the entire house of lies.
The lies they tell us. The lies we tell them. The lies we tell each other. And the lies we tell ourselves. Fear and lies go hand in hand. To expose one is to expose the other.
Looks like the Secret Witness program isn't as secret as I thought. I've got a tank parked out front wearing a black wind breaker with the letters "ATF" on the back. There's a black helicopter in a light blue helmet covering the back. And a handful of death threats have been delivered via rocks. Excuse me while I determine how long I have left to live.
It appears we have a bit of a stand off. The Clinton administration has send the A.T.F. to protect my freedom of speech and remind me that the Clinton campaign hasn't started yet and I shouldn't write about it. They also asked if I knew who wrote Primary Colors. I suggested, Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses, he'll hardly notice a few more death threats. The UN troops appear to be from Haiti looking for another election to protect.
Some of the death threats are friendly suggestions from the Dole, Alexander and Forbes campaigns that it is a two man race. The rest are from Keyes supporters who think I'm part of the conspiracy to not cover their candidate.
So to increase my odds of ever writing a column again in this lifetime, I feel a need to remind the readers this is a close two man race between Alexander, Buchanan, Dole and Forbes. Keyes and Dole were both at the Arizona debates and did a fine job of presenting their cases. Clinton was not in New Hampshire campaigning, she was in the White House working on her new book, How to Make Money Fast: Cattle Futures and Land Development.
Food for thought: If Buchanan can't win and is destroying the Republican party, why are the Democrats trying to stop him too?
Next weeks episode, "Delaware: what if they had a primary and no one came?" or "Arizona: happy birthday Martin Luther King."
Has anyone else noticed this URL, http://www.cpac.org, being flashed during the campaign coverage?