Editorial: Begging Buchanan to stay is unseemly

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 1999 | 9:11 a.m.

Pat Buchanan appears ready to leave the GOP in a bid to be the Reform Party's presidential nominee. Republican presidential aspirants are pleading with Buchanan to stay, despite controversial remarks in his newly released book in which he questions this nation's entry in World War II. Buchanan claims that Nazi Germany didn't pose a threat to the United States after 1940 and that it was the Allies' guarantee of protecting Poland that prompted Adolf Hitler to expand the war, bringing in the West.

Accusations of anti-Semitism persistently have dogged Buchanan. And while his standing in the polls is weak, Republicans fear if he were to run as the Reform Party nominee, he may draw enough Republican voters to his candidacy to swing the election to the Democrats. So far only one Republican seeking the presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has had the courage to say good riddance to Buchanan.

Other Republicans would do well to consider the situation President Harry Truman faced in 1948 when Southern Democrats threatened to withhold their support for him unless he dropped his backing of civil rights laws. The conventional wisdom was that alienating Southern Democratic voters, a crucial part of the New Deal coalition, would doom his candidacy. Truman refused to back down, though, and still won as he championed civil rights. This is a time when Republicans would do well to take a cue from the scrappy president from Missouri, and stand on principle, not politics.