ASHINGTON - Patrick J. Buchanan is back for his third White House run, and is poised to replay the skunk at the Republican presidential garden party.
He's going against the GOP grain again, as he did in 1992 and 1996, proudly defending his protectionist beliefs, pounding the front-runner as wishy-washy, and proclaiming his solidarity with working men and women whom the economic boom has passed by.
''What about the forgotten Americans, those who this Goldilocks economy has left behind?'' Buchanan, 60, asked during a brief interview. ''For them, my message is resonating. I've always spoken for those folks, and I'm going to speak for them again.''
The combative CNN commentator is in full campaign cry on issues pollsters urge the GOP to play down in 2000. Buchanan is an ardent America First opponent of free trade and open borders, an impassioned crusader against abortion, and a pure isolationist in foreign affairs. He can't stand the United Nations and calls the Kosovo conflict ''one of the stupidest wars in American history.''
Buchanan also is making a punching bag out of Texas Governor George W. Bush, a rival for the GOP nomination and the candidate party elders regard as their best hope for regaining the White House after eight years. ''I do not think he is deep on the issues,'' said Buchanan, who in 1992 battered Bush's father, then the president, with biting verbal jabs.
Buchanan has not put a stop to the current buzz that he is so disillusioned with the Republican centrist drift that he will abandon the GOP and make a third-party bid. Last week, Buchanan said that if the GOP ''ceased to be pro-life, it would cease to be my party.''
Republicans have to take the threat seriously. On the stump in Iowa and New Hampshire, Buchanan for months has been firing up small groups of loyal followers, invoking his so-called Pitchfork Brigade to ''mount up and ride to the sound of the guns.'' And as the surprise winner of the 1996 New Hampshire primary, Buchanan has a history of giving GOP front-runners fits.
Many Republicans, and Bush partisans in particular, contend that if Buchanan had not challenged and weakened President Bush during the 1992 primaries, third-party candidate Ross Perot could not have siphoned off so many general-election votes from Bush and handed the presidency to Democrat Bill Clinton.
''Pat Buchanan was a royal pain in 1992,'' said Richard Bond, who was Republican Party chairman at the time. ''He was a consistent distraction to the Bush political operation, and his constant stream of invectives was one of the ingredients in tearing Bush down.
''Buchanan was not helpful then, and he is not helpful now.''
And that's as a Republican. ''Mr. Buchanan is running for the nomination for the Republican Party for president. His focus is as a Republican,'' Bob Adams, Buchanan's communications director, said last week after syndicated columnist Robert Novak kindled speculation to the contrary. Novak had reported Buchanan's deepening ''alienation from his party and the prospective nominee,'' George W. Bush.
Those who have watched Buchanan for decades in Washington say he is fundamentally too traditional to go the independent route. He grew up here in an affluent home, one of nine children in a Scottish-Irish Catholic family ruled by a father who demanded his sons be as conservative as they were streetwise.
''He is as Republican as he is Catholic,'' said Paul Weyrich, president of the conservative Free Congress Foundation. ''He will die a Catholic, and he will die a Republican.''
Russell Verney, chairman of Perot's Dallas-based Reform Party, said he had not spoken to Buchanan but believed he could be ''a very competitive candidate'' for the Reform Party's nomination next year. ''There are no disqualifiers with respect to Buchanan on the issues.''
In these good economic times, Buchanan's populist message of economic nationalism - imposing protective tariffs on foreign imports, rejecting global treaties to promote trade, protecting US jobs from foreign labor - may have more appeal to disenchanted independent voters and blue-collar Democrats than to the Republican Party that Buchanan has long called home.
''Pat has a constituency out there that is his alone,'' said Lyn Nofziger, a veteran GOP operative who is a senior Buchanan adviser. ''The trouble is, that constituency is probably more Democratic than it is Republican.''
Nofziger said two things about a third-party run are ''tempting'' to Buchanan. One is that it would give Democrats a chance they don't have in party primaries to vote for Buchanan. The other is that the Reform Party candidate is going to be eligible for millions of dollars in federal matching funds.
In the interview, Buchanan said there is not the kind of economic angst today that propelled him to a victory over Robert Dole in the 1996 New Hampshire primary and got him 37 percent of the primary vote in 1992. ''I'm glad that New Hampshire is out of a depression, because that's good for New Hampshire and for the country,'' he said.
Buchanan has made a career of articulating policy for the GOP, first as a speechwriter for President Nixon, later as communications director for President Reagan, as a presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996, as an author, and as the sharp-tongued, quick-witted voice of Republican conservatism on CNN's ''Crossfire'' and other talk shows.
Now, Buchanan says, he's ready for one more great debate for the soul of the party and the destiny of the nation, a debate that pits a cultural conservative/economic patriot against the Republican establishment. He puts himself in the first category. In the second category he puts Bush, former Cabinet secretary Elizabeth Dole, Arizona Senator John McCain, and publisher Steve Forbes.
''If one of these wins the GOP nomination, we risk a replay of 1992 and 1996, where both major parties will agree on most major issues, and a pillow fight will ensue over some dinky tax cut,'' Buchanan said in a speech last month before the National Press Club. Buchanan called his rivals ''virtual Xerox copies'' of Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
But Buchanan's flirtation with an independent run could arise from a fear that this great GOP debate will never take place. In a recent fund-raising letter to supporters, he accused the Republican Party of ''cutting backroom deals'' to eliminate straw polls, where he could show grass-roots strength, and ''rigging'' the primary calendar to help the well-financed Bush, whom he calls the party's ''anointed candidate.''
He also calls George W. Bush ''the Prince of Wales,'' as in the offspring of King George, his name for President Bush. ''I cannot see anything thus far that justifies elevating this young man to be president of the United States and the leader of the Western world,'' Buchanan said recently on ''Meet the Press.''
Stephen Duprey, the Republican Party chairman in New Hampshire, denied that the party is manipulating the primaries or abandoning its principles, but he admitted that the GOP, hungry for a winner, is eager to unite behind one candidate.
''There is nothing like eight years out of power to introduce a healthy dose of pragmatism into the Republican Party,'' Duprey said, noting that Buchanan's 1992 state chairman, former US representative Chuck Douglas, was backing Bush this time. ''Not even grass-roots activists like losing,'' Duprey said.
Indeed, Buchanan's bid for 2000 might be handicapped as much by fellow conservatives as by GOP moderates. In 1996, Buchanan had little competition when he ran to the right of Dole and needled him throughout the primary season. This time, the field of social conservatives is crowded with Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, former vice president Dan Quayle, and Senators Bob Smith of New Hampshire and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Forbes also has been courting antiabortion activists.
However, Shelly Uscinski, who stepped down as chairman of New Hampshire's Christian Coalition to manage the Buchanan campaign in the state, has been encouraged by the loyalty and enthusiasm of his supporters.
''I think a few people have been conflicted because there are a lot of different conservative candidates this time,'' Uscinski said. ''But for the most part, Buchananites who were Buchananites are still Buchananites.''
Buchanan, who is energized by even a backyard full of true believers, seems undaunted by his meager, $1 million war chest and single-digit standing in recent national polls. He says he has a better organization and more money than he did in 1995, and he proved he can rally his supporters by handily winning a straw poll at a New Hampshire conservatives' picnic Sunday in Hopkinton.
The pace is grueling, says Shelley Buchanan, the candidate's wife of 28 years and his constant traveling companion, and it's only July 1999. ''He loves it,'' she says, explaining why the couple leaves the comfort of a suburban Washington home every four years and hits the campaign trail. ''It gives Pat a lift.''
