Republicans The Thorn in Bush's Right Side

Politicians are candid at their peril; a gaffe occurs when one of them inadvertently says what he actually thinks. By that standard, presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan is a veritable gaffemeister, insisting that Watergate was "a bunch of Mickey Mouse misdemeanors," Congress is "Israeli- occupied territory," and Ollie North is "a hero." Buchanan's pasty face crinkles into a smile when he recalls penning phrases like "pusillanimous pussyfooters."

Buchanan, 53, has not trimmed his verbal sails since beginning his effort to oust the traitorous George Bush, whose cave-in on taxes was "the Yalta of the Republican Party." He uses Bushspeak a la Saturday Night Live's Dana Carvey to lambaste the President for breaking his tax pledge and begs Bush to debate him "at the country club of his choice." His regular stump speech extolling isolationism, protectionism and fiscal stinginess is seasoned with attacks on "boodling" Congressmen, upholstered think tanks cooking up cockeyed new programs, and softheaded Trilateralists who would bail out Chinese communist Deng Xiaoping, the "85-year-old chain-smoking communist dwarf" but let Macy's go into Chapter 11.

This may not be the stuff to win over the country, but it could be enough to reclaim the Republican right. At first, Buchanan says, he thought his America First ideas would inspire "something more than a supper club but less than a third party." By December, Bush's popularity was moving south, the economy was worsening, and Bush wasn't doing anything about it. "There were more sightings of Elvis in New Hampshire than ((of)) the President," Buchanan said. Buchanan jumped in on Dec. 10, and now, two months later, he is clocking in at 25% to 30% on most polls, assuring that he will send a message, if not a bomb, to the White House.

Buchanan was already well known as former top aide to both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and as co-host of Crossfire, regular on The Capital Gang, occupier of what came to be known as the "Yahoo chair" on The McLaughlin Group, and syndicated columnist. His monthly newsletter, PJB, sent to 30,000 true believers who pay $49 to $98 a year, made him a multimillionaire.

But now Buchanan has given up the protective cocoon of celebrity life, a world in which he traveled by Mercedes (so much for buying American) from his pillared mansion in McLean, Va., to the CNN studio where, as one staffer says, "he never actually had to come into contact with the bozos who think the way he does." He has taken up traveling by minivan, begging for donations, and bedding down at Holiday Inns. The speeches he used to give at about $10,000 a pop are being delivered free in overheated living rooms in New Hampshire.

A little suffering fits the Buchanan Weltanschauung that too much happiness in this life could reduce the chances of salvation in the next -- and that has helped him pull off his aggrieved underdog pose. From inside the Beltway, even before there was one (he was born the third of nine children in a comfortable Washington neighborhood), he has nonetheless successfully positioned himself as a scrappy outsider.