AMY GOODMAN: In another triumph for anti-Washington sentiment, Steve Forbes has taken a second straight primary, this time in Arizona, and now is testing his appeal in solidly conservative South Carolina. Dual wins in the Dakotas kept Bob Dole’s hopes alive in the GOP presidential contest, that scrambles every time the voters speak, and don’t speak. There is a high number of people who are not going out to the polls, and we’re going to be talking about that, as well.

Today, we’ll be talking with national affairs correspondent Larry Bensky, who is still in Arizona, for a wrap-up of the primary there. And then we’ll be turning to third-term Congressmember Bernie Sanders, founder of the Progressive Caucus. His primary in Vermont takes place next week. We’re going to talk to him about progressive politics, congressional politics and presidential politics. We’ll be joined by our co-host in Chicago, Salim Muwakkil, senior editor at In These Times magazine. And finally, we’ll be going to New York with Juan González of the Daily News and be talking to Dennis Rivera, who is head of the health and hospital workers union, a powerful union in New York City. We’ll be talking about healthcare and why it’s not being talked about, and we’ll be talking about union politics throughout the country. That’s all coming up on Democracy Now!

STEVE FORBES: We have an optimistic vision for America. We don’t see a negative vision for America. We don’t. There are three — there are three basic directions, my friends, that our great country can take. One is the direction that we face today, a direction of incoherence, a direction of drift, a direction of having no sense of direction at all, where the president has to wake up each morning, look at the polls to see what he’s supposed to believe that day. That’s one direction. Another direction says that America’s best days are behind it, that we can’t compete anymore in the world, that we have to hide behind walls, sort of a hunker-in-the-bunker mentality. That’s another direction. And our direction, the direction that we believe in, is a profound belief that despite the frustrations of the people today, despite the fears and anxieties that are in our land today, we can turn these problems into opportunities and once again make America that shining city on the hill.

AMY GOODMAN: And that was publisher and also presidential candidate Steve Forbes. With nearly all precincts reporting in Arizona’s Republican primary, it looks like Steve Forbes has won with about 33% of the vote. Bob Dole is second with 30%, and Pat Buchanan third with 27%. Dole was the runaway victor in yesterday’s other two primaries, taking 42% of the vote in North Dakota and 45% in South Dakota. Unofficial returns show Forbes coming in second in North Dakota with 20%, two points ahead of Pat Buchanan. Buchanan ran much stronger in South Dakota, capturing 29% of the vote to 13% for Steve Forbes. Lamar Alexander failed to break double figures in any of the contests.

Joining us to talk about these latest round of primaries, before we move on to South Carolina, is Pacifica national affairs correspondent Larry Bensky in Arizona.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Larry.

LARRY BENSKY: Hello, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. Your assessment of what happened over the last few hours?

LARRY BENSKY: Over the last few hours, Steve Forbes, as you just heard, claimed some sort of victory. I think what’s going on here now is complete disarray in the Republican electorate. You have people who consistently vote for Pat Buchanan on the right. And his support seems to peak somewhere between 25 and 30% of those voters. We saw it in New Hampshire. We saw it in Iowa. He can’t break out of that. He’s got the religious right, the militia right, the anti-abortion right behind him, and that’s a significant constituency in the Republican Party. It’s about 30% of the Republican Party, as I’ve said on this show before. On the other hand, you have people who are looking for an alternative to Bob Dole, because Bob Dole is seen to be lacking in passion, lacking in ideas, lacking in vigor. And all of those things were shown very clearly here in Arizona.

Now people are lurching a little bit over towards Steve Forbes, but you have to remember, Amy, that the people who vote for Steve Forbes in the Republican primary are people who would never vote for Pat Buchanan, and the people who vote for Pat Buchanan are people who would never vote for Steve Forbes. Steve Forbes is an old-fashioned patrician, upper-class person. He has not the religious right’s point of view on gay rights, to say the least. In fact, his father was gay. He has a very nuanced point of view on abortion. He wishes it would just go away, but it’s not just going to go away any more than unwed pregnancies are going to go away and unwanted pregnancies are going to go away. All of these are anathema to the hard right. They’re not interested in a Steve Forbes.

Lamar Alexander, who seemed like a choice for a while, is a guy who has seen his fundraising fall short. Everybody saw this happening to begin with. He wasn’t able to compete here in Arizona. He wasn’t able to spend much time here. He didn’t run very many TV ads.

So you have a very muddy picture right now for the Republicans. Everybody’s still muttering about it, “Where is Colin Powell?”

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Bensky, speaking to us from Arizona, with Forbes at the helm. How much of the issues did Forbes get across? We certainly know about the flat tax. And I was reading some news wires this morning that suggested that 60% of the Republicans in Arizona actually are for a flat tax.

LARRY BENSKY: Yes, that’s correct. That’s what the exit polls said. But, interestingly enough, Amy, the economic issues — people who voted on economic issues added up to about 60% of the electorate, those who thought that taxes, deficit and the economy and jobs were most important. That’s what Steve Forbes talked about here. His TV ads at the beginning, his enormous $3 or $4 million television ad campaign here, where you couldn’t turn on a news program or any kind of public affairs program without seeing a Steve Forbes ad, they started out attacking Bob Dole and tearing him down. But [inaudible] they stopped that, and Steve Forbes ran against the government and the bureaucracy and the IRS. Well, that carries great resonance in the electorate in a state like Arizona, where people are generally Republican, many elderly in the Republican primary, and have an anti-government attitude, and certainly don’t like the idea of their taxes being raised. So he spoke to them on that level. There was nothing about him here, however, that made him look presidential. But it made me think that he was going to be a Republican presidential nominee.

AMY GOODMAN: What looks presidential, Larry?

LARRY BENSKY: Well, I think everybody here who you talk to thinks that Bill Clinton can’t be beat. I mean, the polls show that the Republican primary voters all thought that Bill Clinton would be nominated in a walk — rather, reelected in a walk. The Republicans — 50% of the Republicans said that if Dole was nominated, they would not vote for him in a general election. There’s a very strong push toward third-partyism happening here, Amy. I think, as I’ve said from the beginning, that Pat Buchanan is really running for the nomination of Ross Perot’s Reform Party. Both of them have giant egos. They would have to be buried for that to happen. But I don’t see anything happening from here to the Republican convention that’s going to satisfy everybody in the Republican Party. And I see a lot of centripetal forces which would propel that party towards a split and a conservative alternative, or Ross Perot-type alternative, third-party movement building during the summer in this country.

But you have to remember, most people aren’t voting in these things. I think this is really important to note. We had a 25% turnout of Republicans here in Arizona. Everybody’s hailing this as a record turnout and a testimonial to the primary, which is complete nonsense. It’s a testimonial to the fact that despite the television blitz and all the media hype and everything else, most people don’t want to participate in this electoral system right now, not only in Arizona, but in the rest of the country, especially in a primary here, which was so determined by wealth, Steve Forbes’ money being part of it, Bob Dole spending a fortune here, as well. In a primary analysis show called Democracy Now!, there could hardly be anything less small-D democratic than this Arizona primary, which was put on the ballot by a gimmick, the first primary Arizona ever had. It was an inside politics job by the governor, who’s a deeply corrupt individual, under constant investigation by the federal government, grand juries, etc., a man who’s bankrupt, a man who was responsible for a billion dollars in losses in S&Ls. He’s supposed to be setting a moral example for the state. He puts this on the ballot in order to get his buddy Phil Gramm a start. It doesn’t work. Gramm drops out, and the Republicans then are fragmented. Very few places to vote, no way to register in the last 30 days in order to vote, huge amount of money. So, this is not democracy now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Larry, this program is Democracy Now! And we’re going to continue to push this issue of elections, of democratic principles, that may not be being followed through on in these primaries and caucuses, but something certainly that people strive for in this country. I want to thank you for joining us from Arizona. We’ll be on to South Carolina this weekend. And next week, it is the New York primary, so we’ll be headed up to New York. Larry, thanks for joining us.