The Country Club President Rejects the Right Wing

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 5, 1999 | by Kelly Patricia O'Meara, | Jennifer G. Hickey, | James P. Lucier

Former president Gerald Ford recently was in Washington and recalled the halcyon GOP strategy of 1976, in which he lost the White House to Jimmy Carter. Speaking to a breakfast at the Capitol Hill Club, Ford gave this elder-statesman advice for campaign 2000: "We cannot win with a candidate from the far-right wing of the party."

Quipped Pat Buchanan on the stump in South Carolina: "Ronald Reagan won from the right and Pat Buchanan will." Gary Bauer, on his way to Iowa, responded: "Ford has been spending too much time at the country club. The most successful candidate that we've had in modern times is Ronald Reagan, and if we want the White House back we need a candidate who embraces the Reagan agenda, which is quite different from the Ford agenda"

Says David Keene of the American Conservative Union: "This is a man who believed that Ronald Reagan couldn't win a general election because he was too right-wing." Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation opines: "The problem isn't the philosophy of the candidate. The problem will be if the people can believe the candidate."

Jonathan Baron, a spokesman for Dan Quayle's campaign in Iowa says: "Dan Quayle believes that conservatives are the backbone of the Republican Party and, to win, the Republican Party needs a conservative nominee ... and he will win."

Steve Forbes spokeswoman Juleanna Glover Weiss reads Ford's remarks as indicating that he was talking about Forbes as the likeliest to win the nomination. "Forbes is the only candidate out there setting the agenda with issues that working families are genuinely concerned about," says Weiss, adding: "Forbes draws a tremendous amount o:f support from the social conservatives, but he also draws support from the economic conservatives. He's very good at straddling both those streams."