Sentinel Political Editor

Published in The Orlando Sentinel on October 20, 2000

At a brief stop in Orlando, Buchanan cited attempts to force the Boy Scouts to accept gay scoutmasters and court orders to remove the Ten Commandments from schoolhouses as examples of moral corruption that Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore won`t discuss.

This country is heading in the wrong direction, Buchanan said. The goal of this party is to raise the issues that are not being addressed by other candidates and to try to put them on the table because the American people want them there.

Buchanan`s ad will run during news programs nationally and on North Florida television stations.

The ad features a young girl praying, and a teacher pulling her hands apart and forcing them to the girl`s desk. It also shows a worker ripping a placard of the Ten Commandments off a wall and a photograph of a Boy Scout troop with the phrase Boy Scouts -- a hate group? superimposed over the frame.

They`ve taken God and the Bible out of our schools, the narrator says. It`s time to take our country back from those who are tearing it down.

Buchanan said the they in the ad refers to the American Civil Liberties Union and their fellow travelers.

It is Buchanan`s focus on these issues that caused a split in the Reform Party, founded by Texas billionaire Ross Perot in 1992 as a fiscally conservative but socially libertarian party. Buchanan won the party`s nomination and $12 million in campaign funds from the federal government, but polls show he is far behind Bush and Gore and slightly behind Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.