Word: buchananism
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Funny he should put it that way. One reason that Buchanan is so susceptible now to charges of extremism is that name calling has been his lifelong stock-in-trade. This is a man who can make Switzerland sound like Transylvania and turn GATT into another kind of four-letter word. Among TV talk-show conservatives, Buchanan emerged as the foremost belligerent power because when he talks, no niceties are observed. Race and immigration? "If we had to take a million immigrants in, say, Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them in Virginia, what group would be easier...
Likewise with his campaign stump speech, which has the devilish thrust that Dole's so manifestly lacks. Not until you hear Buchanan go ballistic on immigration or trade can you fully grasp what the word "earshot" means. He has a different term for it: "going iambic," marshaling his punch lines into warrior poetry. "They are honed," he told TIME. "You work on it and you work on it and then you get the cheer line...
...York City, Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called Buchanan's primary victory "frightening" and raised the question of his attitude toward Jews. But it was Bob Dole who summed up the charge against Buchanan in a few words. The morning after New Hampshire, he said the G.O.P. primary race was now a contest between "the mainstream and the extreme." Later, under pressure from Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, Dole promised to tone down his attacks on Buchanan as an extremist. Since then, he hasn't toned them down by much...
From the start, Buchanan has been expecting his primary-season opponents to gang up on him. But the scale and intensity of the not-so-friendly fire have been more than he counted on. "I have lost an enormous amount of respect for some of the leaders of our party," complained his sister and campaign chairman Bay. Swinging through South Dakota, Buchanan warned his fellow Republicans to hold their tongues. "Calm down; relax," he pleaded. "Don't say things you might regret later." Earlier that day he delivered the same message on the Today show. "For heaven's sake, stop...
...Buchanan's many friends in Washington and the media say he's a sweetheart. To account for the occasional bloodlust in his rhetoric, some of them offer the defense of poetic license. Rhetorical overkill is a professional hazard of Washington punditry, the argument goes, especially the twist-and-shout kind that Buchanan mastered on TV. To be heard above the noise on Crossfire, he has to talk tougher than he is. Buchanan's brother James says that's what explains the "Zulus" remark. "He was speaking off the top of his head. He didn't call them 'jungle bunnies...