Word: gattes
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None of the groups the Republicans are scapegoating are responsible for declining wages, lawoffs, transference of jobs to Third World countries, the savings and loans disatster, the Mexican bailout, NAFTA, GATT, militarism, the budget deficit or the serious environmental crisis. The blame should rightly be placed with those institutions with real economic and political power--the large corporations...
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...
Buchanan's solution is Fortress America: pull the U.S. out of NAFTA and GATT, impose a 20% tariff on Chinese goods, 10% on imports from Japan and some kind of levy on goods from Mexico. Combine that with his hard line on immigration, his culture war, his unyielding opposition to abortion and the sweet-and-sour delivery he perfected on Crossfire. Papa's got a brand-new populism...
...gets a prime-time address at their convention and uses it, as he did in 1992, to breathe fire--this time toward Corporate America. Or worse, a Buchanan who tries to extract at least some platform concessions on free trade, like a promise to roll back NAFTA and GATT. Too much of that kind of thing, and the corporate PACs will go running for the Democrats...
Playing the populism game could be tricky for them too. Though he did it with Republican support, Bill Clinton is the President who pushed through NAFTA, GATT and the Mexican bailout. And it's hard for a sitting President to tell even a minority of voters that they aren't doing as well as they were four years ago. But Democrats have the advantage of being able to taunt Republicans for their opposition to raising the minimum wage, for wanting to cut the earned-income tax credit and for their free-floating hostility to labor unions. Says Labor Secretary Robert...