LEXINGTON, Mass. (AP)--Posing before a bronze Revolutionary Minuteman, Patrick J. Buchanan fired shots Saturday at his establishment critics, saying they're part of "the revolt of the over-privileged."

Proving himself a master of the campaign photo op, Buchanan trudged through the snow to the Lexington Green battlefield to proclaim he is winning the war of ideas in the GOP presidential race, even if he faces an "uphill battle" in this week's blizzard of primary balloting.

From a makeshift stage before the Minuteman, Buchanan--who has used Mount Rushmore, the OK Corral and the Citadel as backdrops to his populist campaign--invoked the names of George Washington and other colonial heroes in railing against free-trade deals and the deployment of U.S. troops under United Nations' command.

"Every patriot would have risen up in protest to ceding American sovereignty like that," Buchanan said.

He also claimed credit for recent talk of cultural values and immigration reform by his chief rival, Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), and President Clinton.

"We're winning this battle and everybody knows it. Bob Dole is starting to sound like Pat Buchanan...even Bill Clinton is starting to sound like Pat Buchanan," he told a divided crowd.

More than 500 enthusiasts huddled in a heavy, wet snowfall on the historic battlefield. But some 200 protesters also came from this liberal Boston bedroom community abutting Harvard University, including several who carried signs with Buchanan's name surrounded by Nazi swastikas.

"I feel your pain.... C'mon children. Stop it or I'll take your Pell grants away," Buchanan yelled in a mocking Southern accent as the protesters interrupted his speech, shouting "Go away! Racist, bigot, anti-gay!"

Buchanan, laughing, was unbowed. "This is symbolic and representative of what's going on in America. The establishment is terrified."

"What we have here is the revolt of the over-privileged," he said, stressing that his candidacy is for "working men and women."

While campaigning in Baltimore earlier, Buchanan dismissed charges of anti-Semitism from Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) as proof the GOP hierarchy fear him.

"The Republican establishment is really unworthy of leading America," Buchanan said, calling D'Amato's attack another example of the party operating "in its frenzy and in its horror."

D'Amato, one of Dole's national campaign co-chairs, publicly denounced Buchanan at a Jewish Community Center in Queens, N.Y., to an audience that included Holocaust survivors.

"In today's society, there simply is not, nor should there be, a place for your brand of incendiary fear-mongering," D'Amato said in an open letter to Buchanan. "You have left virtually no stone unturned in your rhetoric, which denigrates women, bashes gays, criminalizes immigrants, insults African-Americans and politicizes religion."

Later that day, Dole beat Buchanan by 15 points to claim the South Carolina primary.

Over the years as a conservative commentator, Buchanan has said women are not "endowed by nature" with the same ambition and will to succeed as men. He has found admirable qualities in Hitler, questioned aspects of the Holocaust and called AIDS nature's retribution against homosexuals.