'America-Last' Media, Plutocrats Targeted Buchanan

• Though Pat Buchanan's campaign stumbled from the get-go, the world's power elite had already made a pact to keep his populist message from ever getting to the American mainstream.

Although Pat Buchanan accepted "full responsibility" for the poor showing of his patriotic and populist Reform Party in the elections, there were powerful forces far beyond his control that blocked his bid for the White House.

For most Americans, the 2000 presidential election results were confusing. But one thing remains clear: Buchanan's third campaign for the White House did very badly at the polls.

The Reform Party's Buchanan-Foster ticket failed to garner the requisite 5 percent needed to achieve automatic ballot access and public funds in the next election and the blame game is now in full swing.

Cynical cartoonists and media pundits seeking to cheapen the genuine populist message of Buchanan have attacked him as a shrewd politician who cut a deal with the Bush campaign.

Naturally disappointed Buchanan supporters have begun to gripe and some have even expressed doubt about some decisions made by Buchanan campaign headquarters. Fingers have been pointed at the Buchanan campaign staff for being "loaded with people above their Peter Principle," out-of-touch and incompetent.

But it should be remembered that the plutocratic elite, power brokers, the media and even Reform Party founder Ross Perot mobilized to squelch Buchanan's populist message from the beginning. These powerful forces were ex tremely effective in preventing his patriotic "America First" message from reaching the American people.

MEDIA BLACKOUT

The most obvious culprit in waylaying the Buchanan campaign was the role played by the Establishment media.

James P. Tucker Jr. wrote in The SPOTLIGHT, June 19, that the world's power elite met in Brussels at Bilderberg 2000 and one of the main points discussed by the Bilderbergers was "keeping Americans ignorant of presidential candidate Pat Buchanan's views by preventing newspapers and broadcast networks from giving more than token coverage of his presidential campaign."

The SPOTLIGHT asked Ezola Foster, Buchanan's vice presidential running mate, on Election Day if she thought the mainstream media had blacked her out and she replied, "99 and four-tenths percent of the time" it did.

The SPOTLIGHT conducted an independent straw poll around the country following the Reform Party national convention in August and asked voters if they had heard of Ezola Foster, the first black woman to be on a major party's presidential ticket. Invariably the answer was "no."

What was most striking in this poll was that American black women knew absolutely nothing about Ezola Foster, even after the elections, and had no idea that a black woman was even running for national office on the Reform Party ticket.

Ezola Foster's image was completely left out of the mainstream press for one reason -- if black voters were made aware of her candidacy there may have been a significant loss of votes from the Gore-Lieberman camp. Although Lieberman's minority status as an "observant" Jew was trumpeted from the rooftops, Fos ter's blackness was deliberately hidden from the voters of America.

When the press did write about Foster it was usually confined to unduly harsh editorial pieces like the one by The Washing ton Post, whose publisher, Donald Gra ham, attended the Bilderberg conference in Brussels. The Post took her statements completely out of context and used them to tarnish her in the eyes of readers.

SOVIET-STYLE DEBATES

"Our strategy was built on getting into the debates," Buchanan said, and when the bipartisan Commission on Presiden tial Debates (CPD) succeeded in keeping him out it was seen by many as sounding the death knell for his campaign.

The SPOTLIGHT and others tried to arrange alternate debate forums in which all the candidates would appear. These were all futile because Buchanan campaign headquarters failed to contact us about them and the American public was left with three vapid and vacuous debates sponsored by big business and organized by the CPD.

Given the fact that Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan were being locked out of the presidential debates, The SPOTLIGHT urged Buchanan to do something newsworthy and challenge, with Nader, the lock-out. Buchanan, however, did not want to stand up to the commissars of the politically correct debates and challenge the legitimacy of their Soviet-style forum. Three great opportunities to gain national media attention were lost.

PALM BEACH VOTES

The Buchanan votes in Palm Beach county have been contested by Gore supporters who challenge the legitimacy of the votes he received there.

It needs to be remembered, however, that Buchanan received nearly 9,000 votes in Palm Beach County in 1996 and that there were 16,500 registered members of the Reform Party in that county last year. For Buchanan to garner 3,400 in Palm Beach County in 2000 is, therefore, not exceptional in any way.