Buchanan Backs Dole
After months of raucous rallies, raised pitchforks and “Lock and Load!” rhetoric, Pat Buchanan’s tenacious presidential campaign ended quietly Monday with a single-page typed statement endorsing Bob Dole:
“The one - the only - realistic chance we have in 1996 to implement the agenda for which we campaigned for 18 months is to keep Congress Republican, and replace Clinton-Gore with a Republican administration.
“Therefore, I endorse the Republican ticket of Dole-Kemp, and will work for a national Republican victory in November.”
Candace won’t make nice
Candace Gingrich said her mother asked her Monday to “be nice to your brother.”
Mom and half-brother Newt may have quite a wait.
“I’ll be nice to my brother and the GOP when they start being nice to immigrants … the poor … people with HIV and AIDS … people of color … and women. I refuse to be nice to them until they start being nice to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people,” said Gingrich, the lesbian half-sister of the House speaker, during a gay-rights protest.
Book shreds Clinton
Clinton impersonator Tim Watters is pretty convincing. When he strode into the Hyatt Regency hotel on Monday to crash a Newt Gingrich breakfast, a tired AP reporter rushed up to him and began asking questions.
Then she suddenly realized the prank and turned crimson. “Oh, you had me going,” she moaned. Watters was hired as a publicity stunt for “The Unshredded Files of Hillary and Bill Clinton,” a new sendup by humorists Henry Beard and John Boswell.
Among the satirical “discoveries” in the book: compromising photos of Clinton with Gary Hart and Donna Rice; Hillary Rodham Clinton’s earliest known writings at age 4 (“Rules my dolls must follow - or else!”); Bill’s early career plans scribbled on a placemat from an Arkansas rib joint (“Suck up to chicken guy; get in on ground floor of great investment deals”); and, the president’s use of the Hubble Space telescope to take photos of Madonna sunbathing in Malibu.
Pataki descended from aliens
New York Gov. George Pataki, who turned down an invitation to speak on immigration at the Republican National Convention, said Monday his maternal grandmother and uncle were illegal aliens.
Pataki aides said the governor turned down the speech because the Dole camp had offered a scripted address that Pataki didn’t feel comfortable with.
Pataki opposes a Republican platform plank calling for the denial of automatic U.S. citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal aliens.
The governor said his grandmother came to America from Ireland using her older sister’s immigration papers. He said his uncle, a German sailor, jumped ship in New York City.