Here are excerpts from Patrick J. Buchanan's speech announcing plans to seek the Reform Party presidential nomination.
''Today I am ending my lifelong membership in the Republican Party and my campaign for its nomination, and I'm declaring my intention to seek the nomination of the Reform Party for the presidency of the United States of America. ...
''... From the thunderous reception we got at Houston in 1992, when I told the Buchanan Brigades we had to come home and stand beside George Bush, to the ovations at Ames this summer last when I faced off with his son, the governor, the Republican Party has been good to me, and I have tried to be loyal to it. But as John F. Kennedy said, sometimes party loyalty asks too much, and today it asks too much of us.''
On government:
''Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties have become nothing but two wings on the same bird of prey. ...
''... Both parties are addicted to soft money; both write laws with corporate lobbyists looking over their shoulder.
''... My friends, this year I believe is our last chance to save our Republic before she disappears into a Godless new world order that our elites are constructing. ...
''Only the Reform Party offers a hope of a real debate and a real choice of destinies for our country.''
On foreign aid:
''I pledge to you I will never send an American army to fight in a foreign war unless our country is attacked or our vital interests are imperiled.
''... They call us isolationists. Well, if they mean I intend to isolate America from all the bloody territorial, tribal, and ethnic wars of the 21st century, I plead guilty.
''... We will bring our soldiers home, where they belong, and rebuild our military might and morale so no nation will dare attack.''
On immigration and race issues:
''But of all the needs of this nation, none is greater for our peace and happiness than racial reconciliation. Let us abolish quotas and set aside these un-American devices that reward people based on the color of their skin or what continent their kinfolk came from. ... All of us must learn our English language. All of us must come to know our common history and heritage and American heroes so we can get our great American melting pot doing its magic again....''
On government spending:
''... We need to restore the old constitutional division of labor in government: defense and foreign policy are the province of the federal government, but welfare and education are the business of state and local governments.
''And in children's education, parents come first, teachers come second, and federal judges, not at all.
''And all federal money for the schoolchildren of America will be sent back to the school districts of America where accountability begins and authority belongs.''
On the Supreme Court:
''We need a new Supreme Court where only constitutionalists need apply, a court that will respect both state's rights and human rights, that will begin to undo the damage done this nation by judicial aggressions, beginning with that abomination they call Roe v. Wade.''
