"THE establishment in Washington is quaking in its boots.
"They are in a terminal panic. They hear the shouts of the peasants coming over the hill. In Washington all the knights and barons will be riding back into the castle, pulling up the draw bridge. The peasants are coming with pitchforks after them.
The crowd in the ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua love it. "Go, Pat go," they shout. "Pat is going all the way to the White House," cries the right wing commentator with a roguish grin.
The ultra conservative Buchanan is one of three challengers to front runner and party choice, Senator Bob Dole, in this crucial Republican primary.
The others are wealthy publisher Steve Forbes and former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, who campaigns in a check shirt. Forbes the stuffed shirt, Alexander the plaid shirt and Buchanan the brown shirt, someone said.
The crowd in the snow covered hotel are a mix of blue collar workers pin striped Christian right, big bellied gun lovers and angry white, gum chewing young men with baseball caps worn backwards.
One bawls "We love you, Pat," when the candidate promises to close the Department of Education.
As they wait for him at rallies, a recording is played over and over of his theme song "We can't let the country go from best to worse, Pat Buchanan puts America first, Pat Buchanan for President."
Supporters complain that everyone is out to get Pat. They all have stories about "push polls", a negative telephone campaign mounted by Senator Dole to discredit his conservative rival.
Mrs Ann Horlick of Londonderry, New Hampshire, explains "I got a telephone call last night from National Research Centre.
"The woman said they were doing a poll and asked Who are you supporting? When I said Pat Buchanan, she said Do you know he is anti women and then she read out to me what he once said."
Some years ago Buchanan, in a remark he now regrets, voiced the opinion that "Women are simply not endowed by nature with the measure of single minded ambition and the will to succeed."
She has come to the Nashua rally, Mrs Horlick says, because she likes Buchanan's economic message.
Her husband was laid off at 59 and couldn't get a new job. "Pushed aside for the New World Order," she complains bitterly.
Buchanan's insurgent campaign is at the centre of a struggle not just for New Hampshire but for the soul of the Grand Old Party.
His candidacy has laid bare deep splits in Republican ranks, between blue collar workers and big corporations, free trade and protectionism, the Christian right and fiscal conservatism, pro life and pro choice, immigration and closed borders.
He has identified a patriotic, anti federal, protectionist constituency to which the other candidates feel they must defer.
Just as Jesse Jackson pulled the Democratic party to the liberal left in 1984, condemning the candidacy of Walter Mondale to oblivion so Buchanan is painting the GOP as a nativist, intolerant party and endangering its chances of winning the White House.
For this reason many growth orientated conservatives in Republican ranks, who emphasise lower taxes and free trade over social issues, are very worried.
Buchanan's views have the potential to split conservatism and the Republican party more than any other force," said Adam Myerson, editor of the conservative Heritage Foundation publication, Policy Review.
As the party establishment worries about how to dump Buchanan while keeping his mutineers on board, the gleeful and always entertaining candidate boasts of how he is changing the dynamics of American politics.
"Bob Dole wants to do something about corporate greed," says Buchanan, who attacks big companies for laying off workers. "Bob, you'd be a little more effective if your statement wasn't made when flying in the corporate jet of Quichita Banana."
"Even Bill Clinton is sounding like me," he says. "Clinton in '96 is running against the guy who became president in '93. He's shameless. He'll be at the National Rifle Association holding up an AK47 and say don't try to take away my firearms.
"My victory will be a victory for the innocent unborn, for conservatism of the heart, a voice for the voiceless, for working men and women seeing their jobs sent overseas by big corporations."
"God bless you, Pat," a man yells.
He gets big cheers from the thousand people packed into the Nashua hotel room when he attacks the United Nations and world trade treaties. "There's going to be no more surrender of sovereignty," he promises.
"Under GATT, control of world trade is transferred to a global institution in Geneva where America has one vote (boos). Our American vote can be cancelled out by Fidel Castro (more boos).
"When I get there, my friends, we re not going to surrender one iota. We're going to get back our lost sovereignty."
His goal is "restoring the constitutional republic of our founding fathers," says Buchanan, who recalls that when he first expressed his conservative views in 1992 against President George Bush, he was greeted with "mocking laughter" from the Washington establishment.
"Who's laughing now, Pat?" a man in the Crowne Plaza shouted.
The candidate laughed uproariously with everyone else.