ZOT! Can there be a serious challenge to Bush in the GOP primaries?

John Buchanan is a journalist and magazine writer based in Miami Beach ^ | november 29, 2003 | john buchanan

[Republican Challenger]

I am a nationally published journalist who has been drafted to challenge George W. Bush in the Republican Presidential primaries, beginning in New Hampshire on January 27. My aim is to prompt legitimate debate and genuine new ideas, but I start with a question:

HAS GEORGE W. BUSH BETRAYED TRADITIONAL GOP VALUES?

He has failed in his promise to control spending. Nondefense spending has skyrocketed under Bush. The Congressional Budget Office reported that for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2003, nondefense spending rose 7% – nearly double the 4% discretionary spending caps Bush promised to enforce (Source: Washington Times). Since Bush took office, nondefense spending has leapt 13% -- 21% if spending on the war on terrorism is included. “My impression of Bush,” says Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, “is that I’ve never seen him give a speech in which he says government is too big and we need to cut costs.”

He has failed in his promise to keep America strong. Under Bush, U.S. foreign policy and international esteem have reached historic lows. After spending hundreds of billions of dollars since 9/11, the Bush administration has failed to catch Osama bin Laden, failed to find Saddam Hussein, failed to defeat Al Qaeda, and failed to stabilize Iraq after an invasion that his own Pentagon policy adviser, Richard Perle, now admits was “illegal.” As a result, the geopolitical balance of power has been jolted, traditional allies have been severely alienated, and as a result, the European Union – led by Great Britain – is now conducting secret talks about the formation of an EU military force outside NATO.

He has failed in his promise to be a “compassionate conservative.” Perhaps never before has a U.S. President so divided the country, according to a recent Time cover story. Despite Bush’s promise to be “a uniter, not a divider,” he has turned Republican against Democrat, rich against poor, Christian against Muslim. He has eroded our civil liberties and Constitutional rights in the name of “national security” and aided and abetted a corporate elite class in the theft of the Republican Party and the two-century-old values that made it the Party of Lincoln. “Corporations have been enthroned,” Lincoln said presciently before he died. “…An era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people…until wealth is aggregated in a few hands…and the Republic is destroyed.” Under Bush, Lincoln’s ominous – and accurate – prediction might find its final manifestation unless he and the “neo-con” corporate juggernaut are stopped.

DO YOU AGREE? Please let me know your thoughts. There will be more to come from me, including a detailed platform and agenda for ending the corporate reign in this country, shrinking the federal bureaucracy, and restoring Constitutional freedoms to pre-9/11 levels. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your comments and questions.

[Chad Fairbanks]

There is little if any free speech left in this country

Ok. Now, provide me with concrete, documented examples of things you'd like to say, but can't for fear of arrest and imprisonment...

[Kaslin]

This DU'er thinks we're stuuupid.

It's one of the many mistakes the left-wingers make

[McGavin999]

I have NEW IDEAS for sale.

Why don't you try selling those ideas to the democrats, the ones they're using are so worn out it's laughable. They'll probably give you a couple of bucks.

[Republican Challenger]

Not me, amigo. Sorry. Try Petersburg, Virginia, Duncan Brown Elementary School. Better luck next time. I ain't THAT goofy (see my photo at www.politics1.com, under Other Republican Candidates.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

You're welcome. : )

[Republican Challenger]

It has generally been my experience that "truth" is based on "facts." Pretty complex logic for you, eh?

[woofie]

You are a dickweed

Im looking for "dickweed" in my Oxford dictionary...could tnat possibly have a different spelling?

[okie01]

"I think, after a career that has taken me around the world as a journalist for 34 years, I have a right to be heard, in the name of the people."

There is no such thing as "a right to be heard". It is asinine to even voice such a demand on a thoughtful political forum such as FreeRepublic.

You have every right to voice your opinion. We are under absolutely no obligation to listen. Or agree.

You are, nonetheless, welcome to your own philosophical quagmire and are pissing up a rope.

[Torie]

Ya, I can't handle it. Abstractions are way beyond my intellectual scope.

[Gumption]

I assume you have the "gift" in seeing the "truth" that eludes the noisome sans culotte.

Hey! I don't mind being called a "sans culotte" but "noisome" goes too far.

I demand satisfaction sir.

[Republican Challenger]

Not only are jobs being outsourced to India -- to the benefit of the transnational corporations and the detriment of the American people -- but other jobs are being lost to illegal immigrants. You can confirm these facts with the Labor Department's own web site. The fact is, that Bush worships at the altar of corporate profit because he is bought and paid for, as are BOTH parties in Congress. The whole system is broken and needs a radical fix based on REAL Republican values of the sort Abe Lincoln practiced in tough times. I am trying to prompt intelligent debate without making it personal for anyone, including Bush. Please help spread the word and traffic to my web site at www.johnbuchanan.org. It is thanks to individual thinkers such as you that I can make progress. And I will.

[Torie]

It is my deordorant against yours.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Freelance journalist John Buchanan explains he is running for President in the 2004 New Hampshire primary to "be the Gene McCarthy of the 2004 race and do to President Bush what McCarthy did to President Johnson in 1968 -- I want to send a loud message that shakes the White House ...

I am running to get corporations out of politics, stop war profiteering, and reform the media." Buchanan first became a favorite of the anti-Bush crowd when he authored an investigative report (linked above) which purports to show ties between the Bush family and a German industrialist who helped finance the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. In the article -- widely circulated on the internet -- Buchanan wrote that "newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his 'enemy national' partners." As a journalist, Buchanan's work has appeared in more than fifty newspapers, magazines and books over the past three decades. Buchanan even purportedly received some death threats after publishing that article. An AP news story about Buchanan's report claims that the Bush Family-Nazi ties are weak at best, as Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of the company at issue. Still -- regardless of whether the facts in his story are true or exaggerated -- President George W. Bush certainly had nothing to do with whatever took place during World War II as he wasn't even born until 1946. Buchanan is also seeking primary ballot status in California, Florida and other elsewhere. In an email to Politics1, he added that he is running in 2004 as a "peace candidate" and is seeking a "chance to be taken seriously as a 'Bush-stopper.'” He also has a deal with a publisher to write -- after his race is done -- a book about his 2004 run.

Additional related links include: Conspiracy Planet (additional Buchanan articles), Buchanan Response to AP Article, History News Network (official GHWB Historian Herb Parmet's analysis of the Nazi charges) and jtwg@bellsouth.net (Buchanan's email address).

[eddie willers]

The first amendment is sacred to me.

Let me quote an earlier post from you

I would re-institute a Fairness Doctrine so that fair and balanced reporting is federally mandated

So having gendarmes standing over you shoulder mandating you write as THEY please is in keeping with your love of the First Amendment?

[deport]

Hey Dude.......

What other great states are you on the ballot in as of this date? Iowa is before NH.... then shortly after comes several more..... You must be on several of them if you intend to defeat the President and secure the Republican nomination.......

Can you kindly give us a listing as of this date?

[Dan from Michigan]

Are you NUTS?

No.

The first amendment is sacred to me

Which is why you promote censorship by the FCC thugs?

There is little if any free speech left in this country

There is more free speech now than there was before, outside of lefists at college campuses.

FCC is government. By having the FCC stick their tentacles, enforced by men with guns as all government orgs are, they are regulating speech and content.

It does not make me proud we are fellow Republicans.

Feeling is mutual. I have enough problems with the big government statists in the dems to have to deal with them here too.

[A Citizen Reporter]

If that's a picture of him, it looks remarkedly like Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.

[jwalsh07]

Evidently you are uninterested in debating the Iraq/Al Qaeda links and the WMD issue. I can understand why having read some of your posts. You're not ready for the Presidency, you're not even ready to replace MurryMom.

[woofie]

Wasnt that guy the father inn American Pie and American Pie 2?

[Chad Fairbanks]

That's him, and his whole "I am a Bush-stopping, Peace Candidate" thing...