August 1, 1996

Buchanan Agrees Not to Speak at GOP Convention

By JAMES BENNET

ASHINGTON -- Pat Buchanan said Wednesday that he accepted the Republican Party's decision to deny him a speech before its convention, adding that he still planned to attend it -- and hoped to leave it -- as a Republican.

But Buchanan said again that he would fight efforts by Bob Dole, the party's presumed presidential nominee, to incorporate a "tolerance plank" into the platform that would specifically refer to abortion, and he released his own preferred versions of Republican planks on abortion, trade and other issues.

As he has for months, Buchanan continued to threaten that he might run as a third-party presidential candidate if Dole and the Republican Party's platform veered from his conservative agenda.

"I am more committed to a lot of these ideas and issues than I am to any party," Buchanan said, in a briefing with reporters here.

That is the stance Buchanan has taken since he shifted his presidential campaign into low gear after losing the California primary at the end of March. Indeed, although details have been filled in, remarkably little has changed in the political standoff between the two remaining Republican presidential campaigns since then.

Buchanan generally refrained from criticizing Dole on Wednesday, although he expressed frustration that the Dole campaign seemed uninterested in his platform ideas. He said that his sister, Angela Bay Buchanan, had tried to telephone "one of the quote grown-ups" in the Dole campaign to discuss the planks, but that he had declined to speak with her.

Buchanan said that he would watch three factors over the next couple of weeks before he would decide whether endorse Dole: the cast of convention speakers; the character of the platform, and the politics of Dole's vice-presidential pick.

He said that he did not think Dole would pick a running mate who supported abortion rights, but that conservatives did not appear to be well-represented among the convention speakers.

Buchanan said that, while he would hold a rally in San Diego the night before the convention begins, he would not speak outside the convention hall while the convention was under way. "That would be disruptive," he said.