From: jrs@netcom.com (John Switzer)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Buchanan's speech at convention
Summary: Text of Buchanan's speech at GOP convention
Keywords: Buchanan Rush Limbaugh
Date: 19 Aug 92 15:31:26 GMT
Distribution: world,usa,na
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

Here's a copy of Buchanan's speech on the first night of the Republican 
convention. Any spelling errors and other mistakes are mine alone.

(Speech delivered by Patrick Buchanan at the Republican convention
in Houston on Monday, August 17, 1992.)

Well, we took the long way home, but we finally got here.  

And I want to congratulate President Bush, and remove any doubt
about where we stand: The primaries are over, the heart is strong
again, and the Buchanan Brigades are enlisted - all the way to a
great comeback victory in November.  

Like many of you last month, I watched that giant masquerade ball
at Madison Square Garden - where 20,000 radicals and liberals came
dressed up as moderates and centrists - in the greatest single
exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history.  

One by one, the prophets of doom appeared at the podium. The Reagan
Decade, they moaned, was a terrible time in America; and the only way
to prevent even worse times, they said, is to entrust our nation's
fate and future to the party that gave us McGovern, Mondale, Carter
and Michael Dukakis.  

No way, my friends. The American people are not going to buy back
into the failed liberalism of the 1960s and '70s - no matter how
slick the package in 1992.  

The malcontents of Madison Square Garden notwithstanding, the 1980s
were not terrible years. They were great years. You know it. I know
it. And the only people who don't know it are the carping critics who
sat on the sidelines of history, jeering at one of the great statesmen
of modern time.  

Out of Jimmy Carter's days of malaise, Ronald Reagan crafted the
longest peacetime recovery in U.S. history - 3 million new businesses
created, and 20 million new jobs.  

Under the Reagan Doctrine, one by one, the communist dominos began
to fall. First, Grenada was liberated, by U.S. troops. Then, the Red
Army was run out of Afghanistan, by U.S. weapons. In Nicaragua, the
Marxist regime was forced to hold free elections -by Ronald Reagan's
contra army - and the Communists were thrown out of power.  

Have they forgotten? It was under our party that the Berlin Wall
came down, and Europe was reunited. It was under our party that the
Soviet Empire collapsed, and the captive nations broke free.  

It is said that each president will be recalled by posterity -
with but a single sentence. George Washington was the father of our
country. Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union. And Ronald Reagan won
the Cold War. And it is time my old colleagues, the columnists and
commentators, looking down on us tonight, from their anchor booths and
sky boxes, gave Ronald Reagan the credit he deserves - for leading
America to victory in the Cold War.  

Most of all, Ronald Reagan made us proud to be Americans again. We
never felt better about our country; and we never stood taller in the
eyes of the world.  

But, we are here, not only to celebrate, but to nominate. And an
American president has many, many roles.  

He is our first diplomat, the architect of American foreign policy.
And which of these two men is more qualified for that role? George
Bush has been U.N. ambassador, CIA director, envoy to China. As vice
president, he co-authored the policies that won the Cold War. As
president, George Bush presided over the liberation of Eastern Europe
and the termination of the Warsaw Pact. And Mr. Clinton? Well, Bill
Clinton couldn't find 150 words to discuss foreign policy in an
acceptance speech that lasted an hour. As was said of an earlier
Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton's foreign policy experience is
pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the International
House of Pancakes.  

The presidency is also America's bully pulpit, what Mr. Truman
called, "pre-eminently a place of moral leadership." George Bush is a
defender of right to life, and life-long champion of the
Judeo-Christian values and beliefs upon which this nation was built.  

Mr. Clinton, however, has a different agenda.  

At its top is unrestricted abortion on demand. When the
Irish-Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to say a
few words, on behalf of the 25 million unborn children destroyed since
Roe v. Wade, he was told there was no place for him at the podium of
Bill Clinton's convention, no room at the inn.  

Yet, a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise
at that convention and exult: "Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the
most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history." And so they do.  

Bill Clinton supports school choice - but only for state-run
schools. Parents who send their children to Christian schools, or
Catholic schools, need not apply.  

Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr. Clinton says of
his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary
believes that 12-year-olds should have a right to sue their parents,
and she has compared marriage as an institution to slavery - and life
on an Indian reservation.  

Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.  

Friends, this is radical feminism. The agenda Clinton & Clinton
would impose on America - abortion on demand, a litmus test for the
Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious
schools, women in combat - that's change all right. But it is not the
kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America
needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation
that we still call God's country.  

A president is also commander-in-chief, the man we empower to send
sons and brothers, fathers and friends, to war.  

George Bush was 17 when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He left his high
school class, walked down to the recruiting office, and signed up to
become the youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific War. And Mr. Clinton?
When Bill Clinton's turn came in Vietnam, he sat up in a dormitory in
Oxford, England, and figured out how to dodge the draft.  

Which of these two men has won the moral authority to call on
Americans to put their lives at risk? I suggest, respectfully, it is
the patriot and war hero, Navy Lt.j.g George Herbert Walker Bush.  

My friends, this campaign is about philosophy, and it is about
character; and George Bush wins on both counts - going away; and it
is time all of us came home and stood beside him. 

As running mate, Mr. Clinton chose Albert Gore. And just how
moderate is Prince Albert? Well, according to the Taxpayers Union, Al
Gore beat out Teddy Kennedy, two straight years, for the title of
biggest spender in the Senate.  

And Teddy Kennedy isn't moderate about anything.  

In New York, Mr. Gore made a startling declaration. Henceforth, he
said, the "central organizing principle" of all governments must be:
the environment.  

Wrong, Albert!  

The central organizing principle of this republic is freedom. And
from the ancient forests of Oregon, to the Inland Empire of
California, America's great middle class has got to start standing up
to the environmental extremists who put insects, rats and birds -
ahead of families, workers and jobs.  

One year ago, my friends, I could not have dreamt I would be here.
I was then still just one of many panelists on what President Bush
calls, "those crazy Sunday talk shows."  

But, I disagreed with the president; and so we challenged the
president in the Republican primaries, and fought as best we could.
From February to June, he won 33 primaries. I can't recall exactly how
many we won.  

But, tonight, I want to talk to the 3 million Americans who voted
for me: I will never forget you, nor the great honor you have done me.
But, I do believe, deep in my heart, that the right place for us to be
now - in this presidential campaign - is right beside George Bush.
This party is our home, this party is where we belong. And, don't let
anyone tell you any different.  

Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him for
freedom-of-choice religious schools, and we stand with him against the
amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing
in law as married men and women.  

We stand with President Bush for right to life, and for voluntary
prayer in the public schools - and against putting American women in
combat. And we stand with President Bush in favor of the right of
small towns and communities to control the raw sewage of pornography
that pollutes our popular culture.  

We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who
interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who
think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.  

My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It
is about who we are. It is about what we believe, it is about what we
stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our
country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to
the kind of nation we will one day be - as was the Cold War itself.
And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on
the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And, so, we have to
come home - and stand beside him.  

My friends, in those six months - from Concord to California - I
came to know our country better than ever before in my life, and I
collected memories that will be with me always.  

There was that day-long ride through the great state of Georgia in
a bus Vice President Bush himself had used in 1988 - a bus they
called Asphalt One. The ride ended with a 9 p.m. speech, in front of a
magnificent Southern mansion, in a town called Fitzgerald.  

There were the workers at the James River Paper Mill, in the frozen
North Country of New Hampshire, hard, tough men, one of whom was
silent, until I shook his hand. Then, he looked up in my eyes, and
said, "Save our jobs!"  

There was the legal secretary at the Manchester airport on
Christmas Day, who told me she was going to vote for me, then broke
down crying, saying, "I've lost my job, I don't have any money;
they're going to take away my daughter. What am I going to do?"  

My friends, even in tough times, these people are with us. They
don't read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they came from the same
schoolyards and playgrounds and towns as we did. They share our
beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the
conservatives of the heart. They are our people. And, we need to
reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know they're hurting.
They don't expect miracles, but they need to know we care.  

There were the people of Hayfork, the tiny town high up in
California's Trinity Alps, a town that is now under a sentence of
death, because a federal judge has set aside 9 million acres for the
habitat of the spotted owl - forgetting about the habitat of the men
and women who live and work in Hayfork. And there where the brave live
the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the
American dream.  

Friends, in those wonderful 25 weeks, the saddest days were the
days of the bloody riot in L.A., worst in our history. But even out of
that awful tragedy can come a message of hope.  

Hours after the violence ended I visited the Army compound in south
L.A., where an officer of the 18th Cavalry, that had come to rescue
the city, introduced me to two of his troopers. They could not have
been 20 years old. He told them to recount there story.  

They had come into Los Angeles late on the second day; and they
walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every
building but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was
heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old
men and women. When the troopers arrived, M16s at the ready, the mob
threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing
that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.  

Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life
for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their
lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know.
And, as they took back the streets of Los Angeles, block by block, so
we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back
our country.  

God bless you, and God bless America. 

-- 
John Switzer               | "Want world peace?
                           | Fight for world freedom."
74076.1250@Compuserve.com  | 
jrs@netcom.com             |