In 1976, Goldwater not only threw his support to pro-abortion Gerald Ford but actually did media ads suggesting that Republicans would not want Reagan's finger near the nuclear button in a remarkable parody of LBJ's "Little Girl with a Daisy" ads on the same theme against Goldwater in 1964. Ayn Rand also was apoplectic over Reagan and pleaded with readers of her Ayn Rand Letter to vote for Ford to save abortion.
Goldwater was facing defeat at the hands of a pro-life Democrat businessman in 1980 as the nation prepared to elect Reagan by a national landslide and to decapitate the radical ten leftist leaders of Senate Demonrats (McGovern, Church, Gaylord Nelson, et al.). He went to Arizona pro-life leaders on the Friday before the election and "surrendered" promising to vote pro-life from that point forward and not to run for re-election in 1986. Foolishly, they believed Goldwater, figured a senior and converted Goldwater would be more effective than a freshman pro-life Democrat, and moved enough of their vote to Goldwater for him to make up a 5% deficit reported in polls and squeak through.
Faced with the first pro-life voting opportunity of the new term, Goldwater voted pro-abortion. Questioned as to why "Mr. Integrity" violated his pledge to the pro-lifers wh re-elected him, he said that he imagined his late wife Peggy standing there and could not vote against her wishes and that the pro-lifers could not do anything about it anyway. He spent the rest of his Senate career as the social libertine he had always been.
After leaving office, he bragged about personally taking his daughter for an abortion and expressed his contempt for anyone who disagreed with that action. His son Barry, Jr., lost a California Senate race while under fire over his alleged personal preferences. Barry the Elder had a grandson who was an open homosexual activist and whom Barry the Elder publicly and noisily supported.
My ancestry was Democrat on both sides. I became a Republican because of Barry Goldwater in 1963-64 but he was not vocal in his support of abortion at that time. I can say that, influenced by Barry the Elder to become a Republican, I got to be a state chairman of Reagan's challenge to Goldwater-backed Gerry Ford. By that time, I would not have supported Goldwater for dogcatcher because of his social libertinism.
In the last analysis, Barry Morris Goldwater enthusiastically revealed himself to be a rank liar, a man devoid of integrity, an enthusiast for babykilling and an enthusiast for the "rights" of those practicing the "love that dare not speak its name" in saner times and now will not shut up. If history is being re-written, the re-writing is by those who claim that Goldwater was a late convert to social issue revolutionary status. He believed in baby-killing all along.
Thank you for that information. Much of it is news to me. I thought Goldwater's record was solidly pro-life until late in his career.
I voted for Ford in the general election in 1976, but I voted for Reagan in the Republican primary (the very first vote I ever cast!). You might be interested to learn that in the 1980 Republican primary, I actually voted for Philip Crane! But yes, I voted for Reagan in November.
What do old-style Euro-Catholic conservatives see in the Jacobin sympathizing Jefferson, and why do you have so little regard for the anti-Jacobin, anti-Illuminist New England clergy? And btw, the purpose of the Alien and Sedition Acts was to protect our country from infiltration by foreign revolutionaries (much like later conservative, anti-Communist legislation).
BTW, when I was in the JBS (1977-81) I noticed that the Society held to Jefferson's interpretation of the Constitution but that all its literature and publications endorsed the Federalists as the conservatives of their era. When I asked my coordinator how they could do this he said I thought too much.
good reminder
You're a valuable resource, brother. Thank you. God Bless