A Party of Appeasement; The Harassment of Gary Bauer
EDITORIAL A Party of Appeasement? In the late 1960s, the Democratic party encountered in its ranks a New Left contemptuous of American institutions but powerful in the most prestigious of them. A...
...Cannon advised a full-scale effort...
...Last week, George W. Bush showed no hesitation in criticizing House Republicans for trying "to balance their budget on the backs of the poor...
...He doesn't want to export our ideals because he doesn't believe in American ideals...
...For all of his reactionary nostalgia for an America that allegedly once was, he objects to the core principles of the American experiment...
...Christian politicians and evangelical leaders commonly follow an unspoken rule not to meet behind doors with female staff members or travel alone with them," the Post said...
...Is the Republican party's slogan really going to be "It's Politics...
...Now, there's another false idea that the media, including the Post again, seemingly want to impose on evangelical Christians engaged in poli-tics—or at least on Gary Bauer, the Republican presidential candidate who used to run the Family Research Council...
...But on the much more important matter of Buchanan and Buchananism, an issue that truly defines him and his party, Bush goes wobbly...
...Today, he doesn't want America to lead the world because he doesn't think America is worthy of leading the world...
...Now the Republican party faces a similar challenge, in the person of Pat Buchanan...
...The GOP's tolerance of McCarthy, meanwhile, damaged anti-communism for a generation...
...Last week, he said, "If you stay with it, and . . . keep going back at 'em, and back at 'em, and let them keep hitting you and go back at them, then it sort of fades away and you are standing there smiling...
...A few Democrats in the old Harry Truman mold were willing to confront the radicals head on...
...They are fundamental...
...Of course not...
...Meanwhile, Buchanan's dark influence will grow within the party, simply because the forces of Buchananism will know what they believe and what they want...
...Jarvis defended his defection from Bauer to Forbes by telling Gail Collins of the New York Times, "What's wonderful about Steve Forbes is that he will never be alone with a woman...
...But the party establishment decided to be "sophisticated...
...Does the Republican party celebrate the achievements of the American Century and does it plan to build on those achievements in the century to come...
...William Kristol The Harassment of Gary Bauer In 1993, the Washington Post dismissed Christian conservatives involved in national politics as "largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command...
...As it turned out, Bauer was pilloried for violating a standard that hasn't been applied to any other candidate, Christians included...
...They even offer a few bad historical analogies...
...I would say, don't let the door hit you on the way out," Senator Slade Gorton declared...
...Jarvis soon left the Bauer campaign...
...But Eisenhower's kid-glove treatment of McCarthy, even after McCarthy's attack on George Marshall, was a shameful blunder that Eisenhower later regretted...
...That's fine with us...
...He believes the American government stupidly and malevolently sent hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths...
...And the Post ultimately apologized for its mistake...
...And no one stepped forward to charge that he had...
...The Republican national chairman, Jim Nicholson, pays a call on Buchanan at his home to ask him to remain in the party...
...Denouncing Pat Buchanan may indeed alienate some of his supporters...
...The essence of Buchananism is not anti-Semitism, or protectionism, or isolationism...
...George W. Bush sets the tone...
...Jarvis has repeated his complaint about Bauer meeting alone with a woman (his deputy campaign manager) in numerous TV interviews...
...But failing to denounce him will alienate the country...
...Needless to say, there was a fair amount of politics involved in this statement, with Bush polishing his "compassionate conservative" credentials at the expense of the hapless House GOP...
...Should this preclude him from conferring alone with Elaine Kamarck, his top policy adviser...
...Charles Jarvis, Bauer's former campaign chairman who now backs Steve Forbes for the GOP nomination, said Bauer had met alone in his office with the woman and traveled with her on several occasions...
...Well, everyone steps up to the microphones and offers ritual denunciations of Buchanan's theories about World War II...
...They were routine political trips, on commercial airline flights, with the young woman along in a conventional staff role...
...I have a good mind to go down there and sue that dude for intellectual property theft...
...Some Republicans, to their credit, have recognized this...
...Since the party elites didn't have the courage to defend American institutions and principles against the Blame America First crowd, Americans decided that the Democratic party could not be trusted with the White House...
...It is about the Republican party...
...In that, Bauer succeeded, only to be tagged with a new charge that ought to be dismissed out of hand...
...And what if she had quit, gone to the Post, and told of the incident...
...The core belief that animates these derivative elements of Buchananism is that American government throughout the twentieth century has been a disgrace and a fraud...
...I'm going to need every vote I can get among Republicans to win the election...
...The Democrats went on to lose five of the next six presidential elections...
...There's one especially pernicious aspect of the attack on Bauer...
...That's why, like the New Left, he objects to the American Century...
...If Pat Buchanan is smiling at the end of all this, the Republican party will be much diminished...
...How is the Republican establishment responding to the rise of a Blame-America-Firster in its midst...
...Instead, a new accusation surfaced...
...And the travel...
...Please, Steve, say it ain't so...
...Surely Jarvis knows what most people will suspect when they hear him: that Bauer is having a Clinton-like sexual affair...
...He let a staff dispute between Jarvis and campaign manager Frank Cannon fester for months...
...It's not hard to predict what will happen if Republicans continue to appease Buchanan...
...It gets worse...
...Yet he surely meets privately with his press secretary and adviser Karen Hughes, who's considerably younger...
...They tried to work with the radicals, to corral them, to engage them in dialogue...
...Dwight Eisenhower, they claim, let Joseph McCarthy burn himself out rather than split the party by taking him on...
...He said it was "trash can politics at its worst...
...Sometimes publicly, and more often privately, party operatives will explain their tactical calculation: Denouncing Buchanan will alienate some of his supporters in the party and only give him more attention...
...And Republican loyalists will know in their hearts that this conclusion is not wrong...
...This absurd standard grew out of staff turmoil at the Bauer campaign and a subsequent rumor that Bauer was having an affair with a young woman on his staff...
...Senators George Voinovich and Chuck Hagel have echoed these remarks...
...On Capitol Hill, a few clear voices have acknowledged that inclusion becomes suicide when it means including enemies...
...The idea: that Bauer, as a serious Christian, should refrain from ever meeting alone with a woman, even a top campaign staffer, who's not his wife...
...Buchanan is as much a Blame America First radical as the leftists of the late 1960s...
...Jarvis wanted Bauer to de-emphasize the Iowa straw vote in August...
...I don't want Pat Buchanan to leave the party...
...Last week, Bauer, with his wife Carol and three children at his side, flatly denied the rumor...
...The differences between Pat Buchanan and Republican principles are not minor issues that can be smoothed over behind closed doors...
...The truth is, Bauer is a deeply moral man who's never given the slightest hint of being romantically interested in a woman other than his wife...
...If the Republican party can't stand up to Pat Buchanan, and if it can't explain why it rejects his view of America, is it a party worthy of governing...
...Gary Bauer has made mistakes in his campaign...
...It's politics...
...Never...
...What if Bauer had turned away a top female staffer who wanted to meet with him privately, telling her a male aide must be in the room...
...The meetings, after all, occurred at Bauer headquarters, where Bauer's older daughter works...
...I have not violated my vows...
...At the beginning of this decade, the national Republican party repudiated David Duke...
...It was incorrect...
...The public will conclude that Republicans don't really believe in anything but winning...
...The American people drew the obvious conclusion: The Democratic party establishment was gutless...
...Or is it just a collection of politicians who seek office, and who will swallow anything in their efforts to accumulate support for the next election...
...Bauer would have been pilloried for following a medieval practice that discriminates against women, puts them at a sharp disadvantage, and is breathtakingly unfair...
...But when asked, Jarvis has said he doesn't believe this to be true, nor do other disgruntled staffers who've left the Bauer campaign...
...Here Bush is willing to sacrifice party unity to help himself in next year's election...
...And what about Vice President Albert Gore, who recently told religion writers that his Christian faith "is the center of my life...
...Senior Republican senators equivocate...
...The Republican establishment, of course, has some sophisticated reasons for appeasing Buchanan...
...For the Buchanan question isn't finally about Pat Buchanan...
...The press, notably the Washington Post, took this fresh charge with utmost seriousness...
...Does it believe in American ideals and American global leadership...
...But then, in the next breath, most Republican leaders become detente-niks...
...Offered as simple fact rather than someone's opinion, the characterization was not only a slur...
...Fred Barnes...
...No, they don't...
...Surely it should not close the decade with the appeasement of Pat Buchanan, who once said: "David Duke is busy stealing from me...
...His claim that the United States had no business getting into World Wars I and II follows from his belief that for the past hundred years, and right up till today, the American government has been hijacked by elite and ethnic interests that do America harm...
...Perhaps Bauer should not have called a press conference to deny a rumor that most people outside the political community hadn't heard...
...The Republican establishment will not...
...Buchanan seems to believe that he can exploit the mushiness of his opponents...
...Bauer and his strategists reasoned that the rumor had created doubts and disappointment among his core supporters, many of them evangelical Christians, and had to be quashed...
...Bauer sided with Cannon, finished fourth (beating Patrick Buchanan), and was regarded as having helped his cause by playing in Iowa...
...Does the party stand for anything...
...I think it's important, should I be the nominee, to unite the Republican party...
...Texas governor George W. Bush has talked often (more often than Bauer, actually) about his deep faith in Jesus Christ as his personal savior...
...Of the presidential contenders, John McCain has made the essential point: "By continuing to appease Buchanan, several of our candidates appear to have put politics ahead of our party's principles...
...Think about this for a moment...
...Does Forbes—magazine publisher, businessman, devoted husband, father of five daughters, presidential candidate—really want to be held to this standard...
...Billy Graham follows that rule, and so do some ordained ministers, and it may well be appropriate for them...
...That, Jarvis said, gave "the appearance of impropriety" and violated the rules supposedly governing Christian conservative men...
...Most of the presidential candidates express the hope that Buchanan will be with them on GOP debate platforms early next year...
...But it's not "commonly" followed by Christian men in secular positions, nor should it be...
Vol. 5 • October 1999 • No. 4
