Chicago. -- What kind of country is it that ends up with presidential candidates such as Pat Buchanan, Phil Gramm and Robert Dornan? Mr. Buchanan has called for an "American Caesar." The gay-bashing Mr. Gramm criticized one opponent for receiving even unsolicited contributions from homosexuals. Mr. Dornan calls the president of the United States a traitor from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Pat Buchanan urges the country to wage a "culture war" against those Americans he considers the enemies of America. Perhaps the only presidential candidate who still praises Joe McCarthy, he wants a new McCarthyism to go after, not communists, but irreligious and pro-pornography people who do not respect the family.
Phil Gramm has been called the most loathed person in the Senate. He has betrayed every ally he ever had there. As a Democrat, he made a pledge to support the party's budget as the price of his appointment to the Budget Committee. Instead, he secretly collaborated with the Reagan White House in undermining his own party's position. He was locked out of some proceedings as a spy.
Mr. Gramm switched parties then, but betrayed Republicans too, using the Republican Senatorial Committee funds and perquisites to advance his own presidential campaign against other Republican contenders.
Bob Dornan makes the other two look moderate. He even makes Rush Limbaugh look moderate when he sits in as the talk-show host's replacement.
What are these assorted bullies and gay-bashers doing in the race? They are doing the same thing that people like Jack Kemp and Richard Cheney are doing out of the race -- admitting the tremendous power of right-wing crazies to control the Republican primary process. No other process could give the Gramms of the world a hope of running the world.
Turnout in Republican primaries is low. The country-club set does not get intimately involved in preliminary bouts. It is the permanently aggrieved who take the trouble to vote as often as possible.
The role unions and city machines used to play in turning out workers for Democratic primaries has been taken over by talk-show hosts, religious activists and patriotic organizations turning out the vote for Republicans.
The vote they turn out is not representative even of the whole Republican Party, much less of the whole nation. This puts the Republicans in the difficult position of not getting a candidate who can win. If you must oppose women's reproductive choice to get through the Republican primaries, what does this mean when facing an electorate at large that overwhelmingly approves of women's choice? A Buchanan, who cannot get elected himself, can stir up enough anti-abortion fervor in the primary crowd to defeat any candidate who backs away from the anti-choice plank in the last Republican platform.
Even if thugs do not win, then, they set the terms for others to win or lose by. That is what lets the Dornans and Gramms strut into New Hampshire.
Garry Wills is a syndicated columnist.