Word: venturas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...bile in their mouths and those who believe the party can one day gain the influence to help fix what is broken in American politics. The first half has hailed pundit-cum-politician Pat Buchanan with a lusty come-aboard; the latter group, led by grappler-turned-governor Jesse Ventura, has begun to throw candidates at the would-be GOP ship-jumper, in the hopes that someone else ? anyone else ? will carry the Reform flag toward higher political ground, and not downhill. Someone who will help keep the party from becoming a mockery of its name...
Ross Perot had it half right; he wanted to fix American politics but chickened out, sacrificing his credibility for a protectionism that went out of style and for love of his own ego. The better half of Perot's posse spawned Jesse Ventura; the failed half degraded into the acid populism that is the stock-in-trade of Pat Buchanan. It plays well in iconoclastic New Hampshire, and with farmers and union men, but if a party aspires to one day leave the fringe in the cause of reform, it is a poison pill. Buchanan is no reformer...
...fine meal of the scraps of the Republican and Democratic feast as a pundit ? but precious little as a wannabe pol ? wants to switch. The battle is on for the soul of Ross Perot's brainchild, and the question being asked by the more serious elements in the Ventura camp is whether Pitchfork Pat has a reformist bone in his body. "I haven't heard his political reform agenda," Minnesota Reform party chairman Dean Barkley told the Washington Post. "I still see him having that abortion issue and that social agenda on the front burner, and I still...
...though Buchanan and Fulani's far-out philosophies are filling a particular vacuum ? Ventura has lit a clear way ahead. He has got Minnesota's Democrats and Republicans talking, and its legislature functioning. Despite the chuckles, Ventura has not disgraced himself, and he has lent his party what must be considered a legitimate ? and respectable ? intellectual identity. He is for a small government that loves tough, and that ordinary folk get to participate in ? namely, for campaign finance reform. He is for fiscal conservatism (a balanced budget and low taxes) and social libertarianism. He has based a so-far-successful...
...unclear whether Buchanan could even get the Reform nomination. Bush allies argue privately to Buchanan that the party is a snake pit of jealousies between Ventura and Perot that would sink his candidacy, and they have warned that if he leaves the G.O.P., he can never come back. According to a Bush ally, "We told Pat, 'Lose the [Reform] nomination, and you're a man without a country.'" The Bush camp has also argued that Ventura will use his power as Reform's ranking officeholder to thwart Buchanan's bid. Last week, they got help with this idea when Ventura...