[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 27, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H2948]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about a couple 
of Republican Presidential candidates who are not leading the polls and 
have not just won in California and other States. Of course, the 
gentleman who has done that is Bob Dole. But I wanted to talk a little 
bit tonight about two friends, because I think that they have a great 
deal to offer the Republican Party and to the Nation, and I think it 
would be very unwise for our party and for the leadership that will be 
emerging from the convention in my hometown in San Diego to ignore 
either these candidates or the many millions of people whom they 
represent.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. Speaker, those two candidates are my great friend and near-seat 
mate from California [Mr. Dornan], who sits on the Armed Services 
Committee with me and whom I have endorsed for President, and another 
good friend, Pat Buchanan who has made a very spirited run at the 
Presidential nomination and not quite made it, but, nonetheless, has, I 
think, touched a nerve with many, many Americans and attracted many 
Americans to his agenda.
  Let me start off by saying, Mr. Speaker, that I listened to my father 
in the past talk to me about political smear campaigns and how people 
were denigrated by the press, by the liberal media, to the point where 
they had no chance of winning an election. I remember him first showing 
me those evidences of such campaigns back in the Barry Goldwater days 
when Barry was denounced as someone who would get us into nuclear war, 
and was unfit to serve in the White House, and was supposed to be a 
very dangerous person. After he concluded an excellent career in the 
Senate, he was then regarded by the same pundits and liberal media 
people as a, quote, conservative statesman, but in those days he was 
bashed a lot.
  And I noticed that Pat Buchanan has taken a lot of bashing, and I 
think very unfairly, because I look at his positions with respect to 
free trade. He opposes President Clinton's NAFTA, so there is something 
wrong with that position from the liberal media standpoint. He supports 
the right to life of unborn children, a traditional Republican opinion 
and position, and of course that is opposed by the liberal media. He 
supports a strong military, and of course that is opposed by the 
liberal media which watched with dismay as President Reagan's strong 
military posture dismantled the Soviet Union and ended the cold war.
  Mr. Speaker, on a personal note Pat and Shelly are wonderful people. 
They are fine people, they care about the Nation, they have great 
compassion for their fellow Americans. And to see the media come out 
and imply that Pat Buchanan was anti-Semitic, and when you ask why they 
thought that, they said, well, it is the way he pronounces terms like 
Goldman Sachs. I thought, my gosh, we live in an age where the media 
can denounce somebody and call them names because of the way they 
pronounce a word. I have not seen McCarthyism, but I guess that is 
probably as close as we will come in these times.
  So, Pat Buchanan has a great deal to offer the Republican Party. He 
really has the traditional Republican positions of fair trade, not free 
trade. Remember that, when John Kennedy offered one of the first free 
trade bills back in 1962, it was opposed mainly by three Senators: 
Barry Goldwater, Strom Thurmond, and a Senator named Prescott Bush, the 
father of the future President, George Bush. Conservatives opposed free 
trade because we thought that, if you gave away pieces of the American 
market and did not get anything in return, you were disserving millions 
of American working people and small businesses, and that is exactly 
the case today. And Pat Buchanan has been exactly right about NAFTA, 
and President Clinton, who fathered NAFTA, has been exactly wrong.
  There was a $3 billion trade surplus over Mexico before NAFTA. Today 
there is a $15 billion trade deficit. That means billions of dollars 
gone that would have been coming to Americans who are working in 
America making those components and those products that now are made in 
Mexico. We have now a $30 billion trade deficit with Communist China, 
which even now is building short-range and long-range missiles, has a 
big weapons market in the Third World, selling weapons to Libya and 
Iraq and other nations.
  So Pat Buchanan has traditional Republican principles, and I think it 
is a tragedy that he was smeared so thoroughly by the American media. I 
hope that Bob Dole will open wide his party door and the door to the 
convention to Pat and to my other great friend, the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Dornan].

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