D’Amato Continues Attacks On His Republican Brethren New York Senator Calls Pat Buchanan A ‘Philosophical Ayatollah’
Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, fresh from stirring a furor by criticizing House Speaker Newt Gingrich, on Saturday expanded his attack to yet another conservative icon, Pat Buchanan, calling him “a philosophical ayatollah.”
Last week the senator accused Gingrich of hurting Republican election chances by projecting extremist political images. Although D’Amato said he was speaking on his own initiative, his remarks drew intense attention because he is chairman of the steering committee for Sen. Bob Dole’s presidential campaign.
Saturday, speaking to a receptive crowd at the Republican National Committee’s Northeast Leadership Conference in Uniondale, D’Amato showed no sign of letting up. “I’m not apologizing to anyone for what I feel,” he said.
D’Amato charged that Buchanan’s campaigns for president have been divisive and turned off mainstream voters. Buchanan ran for the nomination in 1992 and again this year. Although Dole is expected to win the nomination, Buchanan remains an active candidate.
“We have a guy running around who wants to exclude this one, that one, the other one, who beats up on women, beats up on gays, beats up on immigrants,” D’Amato said. “You think Pat Buchanan gave a good message for our party?”
The party should include diverse groups and views, D’Amato said. “I’m pro-life, you’re pro-choice,” he said. “That’s fine with me. You have a right to your opinions.”
At a news conference after the speech, D’Amato said: “Pat Buchanan is bashing women and belittling them, and African Americans and Jews and gays. That’s not the message of inclusiveness.”
“We should not march to some philosophical ayatollah,” he added.
He said that by allowing Buchanan to present his views in a prominent speech at the 1992 Republican convention, the party had “slammed the door in the face of millions of Americans who rightfully rebelled at any party or government that tells them what is right or wrong.”
Responding in an interview, Bay Buchanan, the candidate’s sister and chairwoman of his campaign, said: “It would be my recommendation to Bob Dole to muzzle Senator D’Amato for the sake of the Republican party. Let the senator take a long vacation in a quiet place. He’s an angry, mean-spirited, unscrupulous man who has a problem with the facts.”
D’Amato also elaborated on his criticisms of Gingrich. “‘The Contract With America’ is something most people didn’t know about and didn’t vote for,” he said, attributing the Republican sweep of mid-term congressional elections in 1994 to voter dissatisfaction with President Clinton.
He also called some of the speaker’s personal criticisms of Bill and Hillary Clinton “name-calling nonsense.”
About 140 people packed the meeting room, and gave D’Amato a standing ovation. Nassau County Republican chairman Joseph Mondello took the microphone and said, “Wow!”