Posted on 04/02/2015 6:16:36 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was born in 1970, six years after events refuted a theory on which he is wagering his candidacy. The 1964 theory was that many millions of conservatives abstained from voting because the GOP did not nominate sufficiently deep-dyed conservatives. So if in 1964 the party would choose someone like Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, hitherto dormant conservatives would join the electorate in numbers sufficient for victory.
This theory was slain by a fact — actually, 15,951,378 facts. That was the difference between the 43,129,566 votes President Lyndon Johnson received and the 27,178,188 that Goldwater got on the way to winning six states.
The sensible reason for nominating Goldwater was not because he could win: As Goldwater understood, Americans still recovering from the Kennedy assassination were not going to have a third president in 14 months. The realistic reason was to turn the GOP into a conservative weapon for a future assault on the ramparts of power. Hence in September 1964, William F. Buckley told an audience of young conservatives to anticipate Goldwater’s defeat because he had been nominated “before we had time properly to prepare the ground.” The candidacy had, however, planted “seeds of hope, which will flower on a great November day in the future.” Sixteen Novembers later, they did.
Today, however, there is no need to nominate Cruz in order to make the GOP conservative. Cruz sits in a Senate that has no Republicans akin to the liberals Goldwater served with — New York’s Jacob Javits, Massachusetts’s Edward Brooke, Illinois’s Charles Percy, New Jersey’s Clifford Case, California’s Thomas Kuchel. When Jeb Bush, the most conservative governor of a large state since Ronald Reagan (by some metrics — taxes, school choice — Bush was a more conservative governor than Reagan), is called a threat to conservatism,
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Whose payroll is Will really on???
Unless the guy is writing about BASEBALL, it’s not worth reading anymore.
Sometimes George Will is very insightful and has a lot of good points to make.
This is not one of those times. George Will doesn’t get that this election cycle is different from the ones that preceded it, because conservatives are not going to play the “vote for the most conservative RINO game anymore.
George, you’re either on the train or you’re on the tracks. Jeb Bush is NO conservative, and he’s going nowhere. And neither are you, it seems.
George Will is not the brightest bulb in Lowes. Cruz is running a populist campaign that will attract blue collar voters from across the spectrum. He will isolate the Chamber of Congress and Big Business that has gotten fat on QE while blue collar wages have fallen. They used to be called Reagan democrats and Cruz is focussed on them like a lazer beam, so to speak.
To Mr. Will.....Maybe. Maybe Mr. Goldwater was a bit ahead of history.
Time will tell if you’re right or if Mr. Cruz is right
We tried it your way, George, in 2008 and 2012.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
FUGW
What Will misses is that working class Republicans don't care about tax cuts or new entitlements programs for upper income people. They do care about amnesty and gay marriage.
Wrong comparison. Lyndon Johnson was carrying on for the slain Kennedy of Camelot. No republican was going to win that one.
A better comparison is conservative Reagan following the disastrous liberal Jimmy Carter.
Frankly, I don’t see a dimes worth of difference on policy between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. If there is a difference, please let me know.
Perhaps he hasn't heard that Senator Mark Kirk has announced that he is supporting Loretta Lynch for attorney general, thus assuring her nomination.
George, you are so . . . well, this guy says it best.
Georgie is deeply troubled he couldn’t talk Romney into running. His perfect candidate.
Pray America is waking
For goodness sakes George would you please get outside of DC to talk to real conservatives and real Americans, and not the money grubbing, elitist idiots you spend time with there.
Will brings up 1964 and ignores 1980 and 1984.
Perhaps he's losing his shorter term memory.
Since when has George Will ever been a conservative??? How conveniently he forgets R. Reagan...go back to writing about baseball
Never was
or perhaps you mean a laser beam....
True to a point. The GOP is never going to be conservative. Even a Cruz nomination, which is devoutly to be wished, won't do that.
That said, if the people are to have even the remotest chance of saving this nation, a conservative must be the next Republican nominee.
And of course Will forgets that Reagan was governor of California....far more liberal even then than Florida
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