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Pat Buchanan, Reform Party, (analysis of Buchanan below links )
Click-on web links about Buchanan

Pat Buchanan, Reform Party

Click-on web links about Buchanan
http://www.gopatgo2000.org/
http://www.uiuc.edu/ro/buchanan/
http://www.buchanan.org/
The dark side http://www.realchange.org/buchanan.htm
http://www.issues2000.org/Pat_Buchanan.htm


Buchanan and the Issues
10 is best and 1 is worst; scores are relative to other candidates

If one goes to Buchanan's web site and clicks-on the "issues" there are some of the clearest, non-political, non-double-speak statements (at least compared to Bush and Gore) on issues. He chose to put policy statements on the web only on certain issues. We have derived enough information from other sources to augment his site issues and score other issues with the exception of Judicial Reform.

Nationalism (his version of American's interest first) is the reoccurring thread though all his policies and statements. Some good and some bad is a fall-out of this outlook.

 

Campaign, Election Reform 7

Buchanan campaign reform is ahead of where we are today. In terms of direct candidate contributions and reporting, it would clean up a many issues associated with our current crop of bought-politicians. He does not speak to the important issue of party contributions which is an important soft money path that needs reform.

Media Reform 2

As a fairly well known and highly paid TV commentator, Buchanan apparently is not going to bite the hand that feeds him. We could not find one statement in opposition to the major media problems about which we are concerned on this site.

Environment and Animal Protection 4

Buchanan's nationalism mixed with his version of private property rights makes for an improvement over Bush's environmental policies but they are still not very beneficial to the survival of the earth and people.

Buchanan is opposed to NAFTA and GATT because he feels that they hurt America's work force and supercede America's environmental policies. Buchanan has said that if Americans want to protect dolphins, then the World Trade Organization (WTO) should not have any domain over that policy (foreign tuna fishing fleets suing US over our dolphin safe tuna policy). On the other hand, his private property rights policy would probably cause more endangered species to be killed.

Basic Human Rights 4

Again Buchanan would be an improvement over Bush and Gore in this area as a by-product of his isolationism and nationalism. Buchanan opposes giving favored nation trading status to China due to their many human rights violations and large trade surplus with the US. He has also opposed US involvement in many of our foreign entanglements, and giving foreign aid, which has helped prop up many bloodthirsty dictatorships, at US taxpayers expense.

He falls down on domestic free speech issues because of his fundamentalist Christian right views and alignments, which promotes censorship (there are numerous sources of information on the fundamentalist efforts at censorship, a reasonable starting place is the People for the American Way web site).

Sustainable Economics 5

Again, as a by-product of his nationalism, Buchanan is better than Bush on this issue. Since GATT and NAFTA have caused both manufacturing labor and environmental standards to sink to the lowest denominator and erode sustainable economics in the US, then it follows that his opposition to those treaties would help sustainable economics here. This is offset by his basically hands-off policy on domestic corporations no matter how destructive their behavior is to natural resources.

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