Before last November, there was no point in weighing the various presidential possibilities for 1996, since elections are always bound to bring crucial changes; and this one did, and how! Now, however, a mad early scramble for the Republican nomination has already begun, and will emerge in full force by this summer. Now that many states have pushed their 1996 primaries much earlier to obtain influence over the nomination ("front-loading"), it becomes more important than ever to get into the race, and to start raising money, as soon as possible. The standard early ploy is to speak at Republican or other key gatherings in crucial early primary states, and to appoint committees to "investigate the potential for entering the race" (i.e., to see how much money can be raised and how many supporters can be rallied).

A word of caution: many of the names floating out there are people who don't seriously expect to get the nomination. What they really want is the vice-presidential nod, but nobody ever announces: "I want to run for vice president!" The thing to do is to get your name out, get some support, and hope that lightning will strike in the shape of whoever gets the party's nod for president.

Dominant in both major parties for decades is what has been loosely called the "Eastern Establishment," which, in the Republican party, boils down to a close but sometimes uneasy alliance between two powerful and wealthy groups: the Rockefellers and their numerous industrial, corporate, and financial coterie ("the Rockefeller World Empire") (RWE); and the neoconservative-Wall Street group, the latter being a tight coalition of neoconservative foundations, academics, pundits, journalists, and think-tankers, along with their Wall Street allies.

Here we focus on the Republicans; the ruling elites among the Democrats are in some ways different – e.g., multi-gendered, multicultural, victim groups and the Hard Left, though the Rockefellers and the left-neocon Wall Streeters are also powerful if not dominant there. The neocons, who joined the Republican right, and soon took it over, in the late 1970s, brought to the alliance with the Rockefellers the crucial opinion-moulding elite (academia, pundits, technocrats, think-tankers, etc.), plus lots of money from endowed foundations, originally Old Right, which the neocons managed to capture totally in the early 1980s. Whereas the Rockefellers undoubtedly have more money altogether than the neocons, they are obliged to do things with their money – like producing oil – whereas neocon foundation money is free to exert all of its influence in a singleminded drive for State power. In addition, the moulding of public opinion is crucial for any wielding of power, since intellectuals must be relied on to spin the apologia for the exercise of power, and for getting the public to go along with the policies which violate all their sound instincts, e.g., higher taxes, government regulation, foreign aid, open borders, condomania, gun control, affirmative action, the welfare state, or the virtual expulsion of Christianity from the public square.

The Establishment within the Republican party is The Enemy, and always has been. The Eastern Establishment has been the key force in ruling the country for decades, and has guided the Republican party into aiding and abetting the Democrats in their continuing drive toward socialism; in the case of the Establishment, a corporate-statist socialism. It was in rebellion against this elite that the Old, pre-Goldwater right, essentially middle class and businessmen from the Midwestern heartland, waged its determined though losing struggle. And it was against the kindred Democrat elite that the American people waged their glorious populist revolution last year.

The composition of the Republican Eastern Establishment, however, has changed over the decades. From World War II until the 1970s, they consisted of the Rockefeller World Empire; since the late 1970s, however, the RWE has been joined by the neocon-Wall Street forces. In fact, the neocons have successfully achieved primacy over their Rockefeller allies in dominating the Republican party. One crucial reason is that the Rockefellers were always openly leftists (or "moderates" in the whitewash term of the liberal media), so that Nelson Rockefeller and the phrase "Rockefeller Republican" became a stench in the nostrils of every conservative, grassroots American. But the neocons were sneakier; they moved rightward from being Truman-Humphrey Democrats in the late 1970s; they claimed to be "conservative" and in short order managed to take control of the entire conservative movement.

How did the neocons accomplish such a feat? For one thing, as self-proclaimed New York Intellectuals they brought to the Republicans and to the conservative movement a veneer of High Theory that the party and the movement had long lacked: and as ardent "anti-Communists" and "ex"-leftists they were warmly embraced by conservatives as prodigal children and as knowledgeable comrades in the Great Crusade against the Soviet Union. Overlooked in this enthusiasm was the fact that the neocons' anti-Communism was rooted, not in the anti-socialism of the right, but in an adherence to other, anti-Stalin wings of the Marxist Church (e.g., Trotskyite, Bukharinite, Menshevik, and, generally, "right-wing Social Democrat"). This bloodless surrender to the neocons could never have been achieved without leadership in this process by the Pope of the Right since the late 1950s; Bill Buckley and his National Review. Buckley was motivated, not only by the anti-Soviet Communism common to the right, but even more by his yearning for respectability and social acceptance in the fetid hothouse atmosphere of the New York intelligentsiaCan acceptance that could be secured by the Kristols and the Podhoretzes.

Once they were welcomed into the conservative tent; it was duck soup for the neocons to take over: propelled by their organizing skills and their drive for power honed for decades in the Marxist-Leninist movement, and clinched by their rapid takeover of wealthy foundations endowed by Old Right heartland businessmen who doubtless have been spinning rapidly in their graves. Hence, the neocon dominance in much of the Reaganite movement, especially in foreign policy, in the upper strata of conservatism, and now in elite sectors of the Republican party.

Many of those lining up in the presidential race are opportunists ready to bend to pressure from the most powerful quarters: few are leaders of genuine principle. But, in light of our analysis, it is important to distinguish between opportunists (or "pragmatists," as they like to be called) who are willing to bend to the popular will, versus those whose allegiance, and whose sellouts, will not be in obedience to the popular will but to the malignant elites of the neocons or the Rockefeller World Empire. In view of the neocons' overriding strength in the conservative leadership, it is particularly vital for paleos and populists, for those who yearn to advance the great American revolution for liberty and against Big Government, to oppose those whose prime allegiance is owed to the neocon power elite. While it would be wonderful to nominate a principled paleo, a genuine populist, we must recognize that we may not be able to have our druthers, and that it would be far better to nominate a pragmatist bending to the popular will than someone who is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Neocon Empire. This is especially true because the American people are now dedicated to rolling back Big Government. Far better, in other words, our opportunist than theirs.

The neocons, as we shall see presently, have a large number of wholly-owned nominees in their stable; they constitute, in horse-racing lingo, an "entry." How did they get so many? For one reason, the way you get to be a potential candidate is to be mentioned in the media; and the more you get mentioned, the more of a viable candidate you become. Who controls the number of mentions? In the Republican-oriented or allied media, the neocons, who constitute the "respectable" conservative spectrum of journalists, pundits, "experts," political consultants, and so on. And so neocon favorites get most of the mentions.

Jack Kemp was the prime neocon candidate for a long time; he has been the neocon fair-haired boy for almost two decades. Plucked out of obscurity as a congressman from Buffalo, Kemp became the Great Thinker, the prince of "progressive" conservatism, the leader in "outreach" to blacks, gays, and all of the increasingly numerous ranks of the "oppressed," champion of their "empowerment" and of the "conservative opportunity society." Kemp's enthusiasm for unions and for the welfare state was demonstrated in his proudly calling himself a "Lane Kirkland Republican" (Lane Kirkland is the leftist longtime head of the AFL-CIO). During the Reagan years, Kemp's devotion to ever Bigger Government and the welfare state could be covered up by the exclusive Reaganite emphasis on cutting capital gains taxes and income taxes in the upper brackets. But when he joined the Bush cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), his odious record in expanding statism and the HUD budget – exposed in devastating critiques by the Mises Institute's Jeff Tucker – began to grate on the conservative grassroots.

Kemp has especially become a cropper in recent years as the conservative grassroots has become angrier at Big Government and the welfare state, and in particular as they have emphasized social and cultural issues. For Kemp's stubborn hostility to cultural conservatism, his refusal to embrace moral or religious values, has finally lost him the support of the religious and cultural right. Kemp has at last become an embarrassment to his neocon masters, and there are increasing signs that they are preparing to ditch him as a candidate. Not that the neocons disagree with Kemp's positions; it's just that in their lust for power, the neocons realize that they must continue to bamboozle and thereby rule over the religious right as an essential building block and base of their coalition; therefore, neocon candidates are expected at least to give due lip-service to morality and "family values" while getting ready to betray them in practice. Either through stupidity or stubbornness, Jack Kemp has refused to accept the open signals and gentle pleas by neocon pundits to get with the morality rhetoric.

In addition to all that, let's face it, Jack Kemp is a lousy candidate. It is no accident that he got almost no votes when he ran in the presidential primaries in 1988. Despite his vaunted "optimism," he has none of the optimist Reagan's famed charm; indeed, Kemp never smiles, and likes to babble on in his squeaky, high-pitched monotone about supply-side economics, not exactly a winner on the stump. Like Clinton, Kemp talks too much, but unlike Slick Willie he has no personal magnetism and no appetite for chatting up the voters. In recent years, moreover, Kemp has grown testy and has Lost It in personal appearances and debates – a sure way to lose votes.

Jack Kemp, it's a pleasure to say, has Had It.

Whereas Kemp at least made it to Congress on his own, Bill Bennett has always been a total creature of the neocons. He was nothing, and had no career, until he was plucked out of the lowest ranks of obscure, know-nothing academia to become Irving Kristol's creature as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Kristol, at the beginning of the Reagan administration, had organized a monstrous and successful smear campaign that deprived the great scholar and genuine conservative Mel Bradford of that post. From NEH, Bennett vaulted to become secretary of education during the second Reagan term. There he advanced the socialistic neocon educational agenda of nationalizing education under the direction of the federal government. On the advent of the Clinton administration, neocon foundation money installed Bennett and Kemp as co-heads of Empower America, twin presidential possibilities. Bennett was also placed in a host of lucrative and essentially no-show posts by his munificently funded neocon mentors.

Unlike Kemp, Bennett talks about morality and religion all the time; and indeed, he is the best-selling "expert" on Virtue. For a while, it looked as if Bennett would be the top neocon candidate, but one problem is that he has never run for, much less been elected to, anything. So he has never been tested. Still, Bennett was able to con the lovable but gullible Christian right into becoming its favorite candidate, and for a while it looked as if Bennett were destined to replace Kemp as the preferred neocon candidate. But then Bennett goofed, admonishing the Christian right that organized homosexuality should be none of their concern; that in fact lesbianism is positively benign. Instead, the Christian right should turn their focus of moral disapproval to the evils of divorce, a battle that most of us thought had been settled a long time ago.

Bennett's high standing with the Christian right took a predictable nosedive as a result: a fall accelerated by Bennett and Kemp's joint trip to California late in the 1994 campaign to denounce the very popular Proposition 187, which cut off taxpayer funding to illegal immigrants. The two men jointly cut their political throats at the behest of their lord and master, Bill Kristol, heir to papa Irving's neocon throne. Presumably, open borders, and even defiance of the manifest popular will, means enough to the neocons that they are willing to sacrifice their two most prominent presidential candidates. When their master's voice spoke, Bennett and Kemp of course had to bend the knee. Fortunately, this takes Bennett out of the presidential sweepstakes.

Don't cry for the neocons, however: they have plenty of candidates left in their stable. Most prominent, and unfortunately also beloved of the Christian right, is the man once properly derided by Pat Buchanan as "little Danny Quayle." Quayle benefits from the new American custom of making a vice president the natural heir to the throne; in the good old days, vice presidents remained obscure forever and no one thought that they had any built-in edge for the presidency.

A Quayle nomination would be a disaster; he is perhaps the only Republican whose stature is lower than Bill Clinton's in the eyes of the American public. And deservedly so; the man is a flyweight, his face indelibly stamped with the look of a bewildered kid. His status as a butt of perpetual ridicule was not simply a creation of the liberal media; the media found it and were delighted to run with the news. Only a Danny Quayle would take the main moral stand of his career in an idiotic confrontation with a fictional TV character. It is true that his memoirs were a bestseller, but he was incautious enough to attack his presidential rivals openly, not a move calculated to endear him to the party faithful. That he is wholly owned by the neocons is demonstrated by the fact that the evil Bill Kristol was his control ("chief of staff") throughout his vice presidency, as well as by the frequency of his joining in neocon smears against Pat Buchanan.

Until the day of writing this article, Dick Cheney would be included in our roster of neocon entrants. Cheney's withdrawal, however, has just been announced. A cautious, uninspired and uninspiring Gerry Ford liberal, Cheney became George Bush's cautious and uninspired secretary of defense. Only the fact that he became a wholly-owned neocon accounts for the durability of his being mentioned and cosseted by Republican conservatives. But while Cheney has been running for president for a long time, his campaign never caught fire. To become a presidential candidate, it is not enough to be cosseted and adopted by the elites; you also have to be able to get votes and support among the public. But no one liked Dick Cheney – no one, that is, except corporate executives, and whatever their strengths and virtues, corporate executives do not constitute a very large bloc of the voting population.

I saw the same curious phenomenon at work in the 1980 campaign. An old and dear friend of mine, a retired corporation executive, told me that while his heart was with Reagan, he was supporting for president John Connally. "Why Connally? I asked, in surprise. "Because Connally can win," he replied solemnly.

So spectacularly wrong was my friend's judgment, that I suspect another very different factor was at work in the disastrous Connally, as well as the Cheney, presidential races. There was apparently something about the personalities of Connally and Cheney that appealed to corporate executives. Maybe they looked every inch the CEO: I don't know. Perhaps a kind corporate exec reader will enlighten us further. At any rate, Dick Cheney no longer constitutes a problem.

But there is another dark horse neocon entrant left: one who has been running for a long time, who remains virtually unknown to the American public and yet who keeps being mentioned over and over as a viable presidential candidate. He keeps being mentioned, as we have noted, because he is yet another wholly-controlled neocon stooge. I refer, of course, to the sainted Lamar Alexander, former governor of Tennessee a long while back. As Bush's secretary of education, Alexander pushed the nationalized education plan of his malignant deputy, neocon theoretician Chester ("Checker") Finn. Since Alexander has been called "everybody's (hah!) No. 2 favorite," don't be surprised if he gets the vice-presidential nomination, either as a "conservative" or as a "moderate" "southern governor," depending on what label is needed by the neocons at the time of the Republican convention.

That leaves us with the newest and perhaps most dangerous neocon of them all, Speaker Newt Gingrich. Most dangerous because his sometimes flaming revolutionary rhetoric makes rank-and-file conservatives think that he is a red-hot opponent of Big Government and champion of the right-wing populist revolution. Newt is anything but. He is a Big Government man to his toes, a long-time champion of Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the welfare state, even more ardent than the Democrats in his devotion to the New World Order and to the extermination of Serbs or of anyone else who gets in the way of neocon-imposed "global democracy."

We shall be dealing more with Newt in Triple R. Suffice it to say here that he is a total neocon, but with a wacko, futurist, technobabble, psycho-babble twist. A half-baked pretend intellectual, loaded with motivational-managerial jargon, he imposes reading lists on his Republican charges, reading lists loaded with books by his futurist, technobabble advisers. Furthermore, as keen observers from different parts of the ideological spectrum have already noted, his personality is disturbingly akin to Clinton's. Like Clinton, Gingrich talks too much, babbling incessantly on tangential topics; like Clinton, he changes his mind rapidly; and like Clinton he brings with him a team of kooky, Utopian-minded statist advisers determined to drag America into "The Future." And, like Clinton, Gingrich has already demonstrated an enormous appetite for personal power. Already, he has made himself the most powerful Speaker of the House since the notorious Joe Cannon. And, at least somewhat like Clinton, Gingrich already brings with him a baggage of ethical problems. He seems to lack a personal ethical compass. Distressingly volatile, even in our post-Cold War age, Newt still makes one uncomfortable about the prospect of his finger being anywhere close to the nuclear button.

For make no mistake: Newt Gingrich is a definite possibility for the presidential race in '96. Already the rumor is hot in Washington that Newt will build on his Speakership to run for the White House. Through his massive fundraising for his own personal GOPAC, he has built up a formidable machine of House Republicans beholden to him throughout the country.

To sum up: the prime overriding task of paleos and populists for the Republican race in '96 is to stop The Enemy: to oppose the nomination of any and all neocon-owned and controlled candidates: that is, to stop Kemp, Bennett, Quayle, Alexander, or Gingrich. They are all, to put it simply, unacceptable. No matter how unprincipled or opportunistic their rivals may be, they may be subject to pressure and influence, and are therefore not entirely hopeless: but the neocon-handled are beyond the Pale.

How about the Rockefellers? Unlike the old days, there are no Rockefeller stooges in this race; the unlamented George Bush was one, and his fate demonstrates where the straight Rockefeller types are today: nowhere. The only possible such nominee is the once famed James R. Baker, Bush's former heir apparent. Once the prince of the liberal media, Baker's total floperoo as alleged savior of the Bush campaign has knocked him totally out of the box. Actually, before that debacle, Baker, as secretary of state, was stabbed in the back by fellow cabinet member Jack Kemp and the neocons for what they deemed insufficient devotion to the State of Israel, which was the major reason – and not his tax increase – for the neocon knifing of Bush in 1992 and their overt as well as covert support for Bill Clinton. Baker has no chance, and of course this is no great loss to the right-wing populist cause.

The favorite of the left-libertarians within the Republican party, as well as of the Republican gays, is Massachusetts Governor William Weld, whose alleged devotion to budget-cutting and fiscal conservatism is as phony as his commitment to gay "rights" and to gay affirmative action is real. A wealthy preppie patrician, Weld, in both content of policy and in personal style is a virtual standing provocation to Christian conservatives, and therefore stands zero chance of the nomination.

Other possibles from the left fringe of the party are Bushie Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin, hoping for lightning to strike as vice president and Woman; and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who has long been an announced candidate for the White House in '96. But the Year of the Woman is long gone, and 1994 saw the remarkable uprising of the Angry White Male (who voted Republican no less than 2 to l). As for Specter, in addition to being Jewish, he is on the far left fringe of Republicans in the Senate. Specter has only done two conservative things in his life: he was tough in questioning Anita Hill (for which he has been abjectly apologizing to organized Womanhood ever since), and, mindful of his presidential prospects, not joining Theresa Heinz in trying to sabotage the recent successful senatorial race of conservative Republican Rick Santorum. (Theresa is the beloved widow of left-liberal multi-millionaire Jack Heinz, who died in a plane crash.) Sorry: not good enough. Presumably Specter too is hoping to emerge as the first Jewish vice presidential candidate in American history. Happily, no chance.

The probable frontrunner: Everyone knows Bob Dole, and knows him all too well. The ultimate Insider, he has been around too long, is too old in an era when Washington insiders are rightly deeply suspect. Not only that: Dole is a statist to the core; he is High-Tax Dole, Dole the Compromiser, always ready to cave in to the Democracy. Furthermore, in an age when politicians are expected to be friendly, smiling, and charming, Bob Dole, to the contrary, is bitter and sardonic. As far as I am concerned, that bitterness is his only attractive quality; but my view is scarcely the typical voter reaction. Sellouty and statist in content; snarling and bitter in form: not the best recipe for national success. Indeed, in national affairs and politics outside Kansas, Dole is a perpetual loser. He is trusted by no one, and quite rightly, except perhaps by Kansas agricultural interests. Though he might well be nominated, the selection of Dole would bring electoral disaster to the Republican party.

Now we get to the more interesting candidates, from the paleo-populist perspective. Gramm is first of all perhaps the brightest of the candidates: unlike Gingrich, he is an intelligent academic, having taught economics at the distinguished Friedmanite economics department of Texas A&M. Unlike the other candidates, when Gramm sells out principle, which he will do often, he knows he is selling out and why, which I guess is a virtue. Since he knows better, he knows that liberty, the free market, and small government is the proper policy for the country. Since libertarianism and small government has now become the will of the grassroots public, Gramm has proven to be amenable to populist grassroots pressure. Since he bends to the political winds, and since he knows in his heart that we are right, he is the likeliest of all the major candidates to be an opportunist in our direction. Unlike the above-mentioned candidates, Gramm is neither a leftist, nor is he owned by either the neocons or the Rockefellers. Hence, with him, the populist cause has a fighting chance for significant influence.

An interesting example of such successful pressure came in the critical fight for Texas Republican chairman in 1994, and for consequent control of the ever-stronger Texas party. Phil Gramm and his senatorial ally, Kay Bailey Hutchison, in the course of her triumphal reelection over trumped-up criminal charges brought by the Democrats, joined in pushing the selection of right-centrist Congressman Joe Barton for chair. Barton was opposed, from the left, by a liberal Republican Woman, heroine of course of the liberal media, and from the right by the paleo Tom Pauken, a former Reagan official who was the candidate both of the Christian right and of libertarian Republicans. Pauken, who was of course demonized as a Christian by the media, has always been friendly to sensible libertarians, and his successful race is an inspiring example of the ability of Christian conservatives and libertarians to join in a common cause.

Tom Pauken, last summer, was the candidate of the mighty grassroots people's revolution against Big Government. At the convention, shrewdly perceiving the groundswell to the right, and being a rightist at heart himself, Gramm, instead of petulantly insisting on Barton to the last, had Barton withdraw his candidacy, and got behind Pauken, who swept to victory to the anguish of the media.

In short, put enough right-wing populist pressure on Gramm, and, his head joining his heart he will cave; he will be happy to be our opportunist. That cannot be said of any of the dedicated neocon or Rockefeller candidates.

All his political life California Governor Pete Wilson was the very model of a liberal Republican: high tax and cultural liberal, he was long the bane of California conservatives and Christian rightists. But he had one important virtue: he was not under Rockefeller or neocon control. If he was a "pragmatist" or opportunist, he was at least his own opportunist. By the summer of 1994, high tax Wilson looked doomed to defeat, and left-Democrat Woman Kathleen Brown, of the famed Democrat Brown family, was far ahead in the polls.

And then Pete Wilson did a remarkable thing: he showed brilliant "political entrepreneurship" by following the public will, even if he had to change his political views a full 180 degrees. Sensing the public will, and being happy to adjust to it, he had the courage to go the whole way: he swung sharply rightward, lowering taxes, and latching on to the one political issue where the mass of the California public stood totally opposed by every single one of the powerful financial and opinion-moulding elites in the nation: open borders. In particular, Wilson was the only leading California politician of either party to support Prop. 187, which barred taxpayer funding to illegal immigrants. Wilson had the enormous courage to weigh in on the side of the people and against the hysterical opposition by all of the elites: all the media, economists, academics, neocons, Big Business, Big Unions, Big Medicine, Big Teachers, you name it. Offhand, it might seem odd to brand as "courageous" taking the side of the voting public; but as we all know, in reality, it does take enormous grit for any political leader to incur the febrile opposition of all the financial, political, and media elites in the country. But in doing so, Pete Wilson's gamble paid off: and he rode to a reelection sweep on the 2:1 tidal wave of Prop. 187.

Not only that: Wilson is consistent. He continues to support national immigration restrictions and cracking down on illegals, he supports the constitutional struggles for Prop 187, and now he has taken the lead on the outrageous "motor-voter" measures of the Democrats, which essentially act as an open invitation to voting fraud and to leftist voting by illegal aliens. Motor voter laws and decisions makes the old Tammany Hall "voting cemeteries" seem like child's play.

In short, Pete Wilson is our opportunist extraordinaire. He is willing to follow the public will, regardless of how many neocon or Rockefeller or other Big Government elites he has to oppose. I never thought I'd live to be saying from the right what the New York Times and other establishment media have for decades been saying smugly from the left. As politicians and presumed conservatives sell out in their direction, these media will hail them for "growing in office," for "maturing," "growing in stature," and "accepting the responsibilities of governing." Well, by God, Pete Wilson has indeed grown in stature and in office, he has matured, and he has accepted the responsibilities of governing. He is governor of the biggest state in the Union, he is a genuine "Comeback Kid," and he will be a fascinating possibility for '96. Before he died, Richard Nixon, no mean political analyst, predicted that Pete Wilson would be reelected, and that he would become the Republican nominee for president in 1996. Wilson has vowed to remain governor, but such vows in politics are made to be broken. Don't sell Pete Wilson short in '96.

In political and social movements, as in sports or war, it is fatal to spend all one's time on the defensive. So far, we have all sat back and let the neocon media mention names, and thereby create their own boomlets for presidential hopefuls. We must begin to think offense, we must attack, take the initiative, create our own possibilities. Why can't we start mentioning names, and develop our own presidential possibilities?

In recent years, we have all gotten beyond the view that a presidential nominee must come from a large state. The Democrats have already saddled us with two small-state southern governors as president: Jimmy Carter and Slick Willie. But we have two magnificent small-state governors of our own. So why don't we start pushing them, and try to create our very own groundswell? I offer two excellent candidates: both successful and sterling paleos. First: For president, Alabama Republican Governor Fob James. Fob James is a foursquare, hardcore paleolibertarian. A Democratic governor of Alabama during the 1980s, he just came roaring back as a Republican, upsetting folksy liberal Democrat governor Jim Folsom, son of the famous Governor "Kissin' Jim" Folsom of decades ago. Last year, Fob led an upsurge of Alabama Republicans throughout the state, wiping out the old memories of nineteenth-century Republicans as the instruments of coercion and Reconstruction.

Second, we offer Mississippi Republican Governor Kirk Fordice, a hardcore paleoconservative, champion of the view, as against hostile neocons, that America is indeed a "Christian nation." At a recent post-election meeting, Fordice challenged the Gingrichian future schlockmeisters Al and Heidi Toffler, insisting that the American people don't want to leap into a future cyberspace; what they want is a return to the peace, quiet, and charm of American life in the 1950s. And so we also offer: For president, Kirk Fordice.

There: let it never be said that we are always "negative" about political leaders! Wouldn't it be wonderful, if, like the neocons, we could create our own narrow ideological spectrum, all the way from, say, James to Fordice? Anyone within that spectrum would be welcome!

Finally, we come to Pat Buchanan, whom we backed enthusiastically in the 1992 primary. Pat has already appointed a committee to investigate his possible candidacy, and there is every indication that he is going to run for president. Obviously, we are sympathetic to his candidacy. Pat wants to Take America Back for the old culture and the Old Republic; and he is one of the few, if not the only, candidate on the horizon who is not only not controlled by the Rockefellers or the neocons, but who would take a principled paleo and America First – let us call it a "pro-American" – position.

But Pat should be asking himself some key questions before he decides to launch a campaign. In 1992, the focus of his campaign was easy: Pat raised the banner of all conservative Republicans who felt betrayed by George Bush. But Bush is gone now; we are in a different era, an era of an emerging populist revolution against Clinton and Big Government, being led and misled by Speaker Gingrich and the rest of the Republican elites. Pat needs to define the focus of his second campaign in the current historical context.

We know what Pat should be doing: He is in a unique position to take up the reins of leading a so far inchoate and leaderless grassroots populist revolution against the egalitarian, collectivist, internationalist ruling elites. This is a revolution of white Euro-males, and Pat needs to focus on their grievances and concerns: their focus should be his focus as well.

What are these concerns? Briefly: high taxes, Big Government regulation (including victimology, affirmative action, anti-human environmentalism); the welfare system and the welfare state; violent crime, including inner-city crime; gun control; foreign aid; foreign military intervention; world government and managed world trade; immigration by hordes of foreigners not assimilated into American culture; the secular attack on the Christian religion.

Right now, there are some troubling rumors that Pat intends to focus almost exclusively on protectionist arguments against foreign imports. It is fine and correct to denounce Nafta, Gatt, and all the other internationalist arrangements for managed bureaucratic trade in the name of "free trade." But the populist grassroots movement is much more than that. It aims to restore the vital Tenth Amendment and to roll back gun control Why has Pat failed to mention the gun issue?

What Pat must do is to raise the banner of right-wing populism: if Ralph Nader and the rank-and-file of the AFL-CIO rally behind Pat's candidacy, that's fine. But a coalition with pro-American (as against pro-foreign, or pro-internationalist) liberals is all well and good, provided that the left joins in on terms laid down by the populist right. What Pat needs to guard against is getting entrapped, in pursuit of such a coalition, into becoming just another variety of "Lane Kirkland Republican." We don't think it will happen, but it is important to get the campaign guidelines straight at the very beginning.

Most lines of strategy for 1996 are necessarily murky. For one thing, no one really knows if there will be a Perotvian populist third party in 1996, with or without Perot as the candidate. It is even possible, though not likely, that there will be five major parties and presidential candidates in 1996: Democrat, Republican, Jesse Jackson left, Tsongas-Powell center, Perotvian right-center, and a Buchananite or whatever Hard Right. In this murky and volatile situation, the important thing for us paleo-populists is that we find a candidate as soon as possible who will lead and develop the cause and the movement of right-wing populism, to raise the standard of the Old, free, decentralized, and strictly limited Republic. Pat Buchanan has the opportunity to lead this glorious cause and to fashion it into a viable, coherent, and powerful political movement and party. Certainly he has the principles and he has the intelligence to do so. Does he have the will?