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Bill Moyers talks with Victor Gold
PBS ^ | June 29, 2007 | Bill Moyers

Posted on 06/30/2007 7:56:53 PM PDT by logician2u

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There is a lot to chew on in this interview with Barry Goldwater's assistant press secretary in his 1964 campaign for President.

Before the fun begins, let me state that I am well familiar with Bill Moyers' pedigree. I do not intend to respond to any replies intended to change the subject from the Republican Party's problems to the left-wing bias of PBS and its various and assorted luminaries posing as documentarists, interviewers and commentators. Yes, it's a shame there isn't equal representation of conservative views on "public television;" however, you and I know that is not going to happen in this lifetime.

Concentrate, if you can, on the points Mr. Gold makes with regard to where the Republican Party has come, and who brought it there. That, I believe, is the primary topic, and the one he explores in depth in his book, Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Neo-Cons and Holy Rollers Destroyed the GOP, which I intend to read just as soon as I get through with my current tome of 600+ pages. (Gold's volume, at least, is somewhat slimmer.)

To tell you a little of my background, I was a Republican loyalist myself for over 30 years, having got my political feet wet on Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign, then working on Ronald Reagan's first California gubernatorial campaign, plus assorted local races which sent some outstanding Republicans to Sacramento and to Washington in the 1960s. My family on my father's side was always Republican, including a great, great-uncle who became a US Senator and ran (unsuccessfully) for Vice President in the late 19th Century.

So what has happened to my party, the one I grew up in? I'm not certain, but I think it was hijacked sometime in the 1990s. That seems to be when everything began going wrong. Blame it on Clinton.

1 posted on 06/30/2007 7:56:55 PM PDT by logician2u
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: logician2u

Nixon’s wage and price controls.


3 posted on 06/30/2007 8:01:10 PM PDT by Abcdefg
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To: Abcdefg
That was a biggie, I will agree. Also, his abandoning Bretton Woods all at the same time, closing the gold window.

Still, the party survived even Nixon and came back strong with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

This time, I'm afraid it's going to be different. There are no Ronald Reagans anywhere in sight.

4 posted on 06/30/2007 8:08:16 PM PDT by logician2u
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To: logician2u

As soon as any “intellectual” starts yapping about his fear of a theocracy my eyes glaze over.

There is one group of people who want to impose a theocracy , and that’s the Muslims in our midst.. these idiotarians who complain about theocracy never seem to notice this for some bizarre reason.

They’re living in some paranoid never-had-existed past and apparentely have no clue what the world has turned into over the past few decades.

Easily dismissed and ignorable.


5 posted on 06/30/2007 8:12:47 PM PDT by pacelvi
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To: logician2u
What Arthur Schlesinger ultimately came up and discovered was the imperial presidency under Nixon. What Nixon did I didn't like was he picked up what Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy had done in terms of the imperial-- what I consider the imperialization of the presidency and continued and expanded it.

It seems like the Imperialization of the President coincides with the availability of TV to the masses.

6 posted on 06/30/2007 8:13:21 PM PDT by operation clinton cleanup
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To: logician2u

what’s busted beyond repair in this country is the news media. that you can have this braying ass moyers(I know I’m coming right up to the line you set) talking about the “idealism” of the Kennedys (JFK included) without fear of contradiction shows the distortion of the political climate. To talk about anything else as a problem with the political system is like lamenting a hangnail on a limb that has been torn off and thrown across the street.


7 posted on 06/30/2007 8:14:11 PM PDT by gusopol3
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To: logician2u
And your point is? If you want to control the Republican party, then you'll have to do it the same way as the neo-cons and Christians: by organizing a governing majority within the party. Whining because you're on the losing side of an internal party power struggle is just that: Whining.

Good luck in your future efforts

8 posted on 06/30/2007 8:14:36 PM PDT by Bismark (Think first, then hit the reply button.)
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To: operation clinton cleanup

Would you say that was a cause or an effect? Or mere coincidence?


9 posted on 06/30/2007 8:20:25 PM PDT by logician2u
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To: logician2u
Bill Moyers made perhaps the most infuriating remark I have ever heard on television. It surely was not the worst thing ever said, but he said it from the grandeur of a CBS "analyst's" chair, back when the big networks still mattered.

It was an election night, a presidential off year, perhaps 1990. The very earliest results had trickled in. They were from Georgia and Kentucky, and they were trending Republican.

Moyers came on -- it was about 7:35 p.m., I checked my watch for the historical record -- and he said, "When you see the South voting Republican like this...that's racism."

(A few weeks later I called into the old Larry King overnight radio show and reported this, much as I have here without much comment. King said, "Are ~you~ a racist, sir?.")

There is no possible takedown of the MSM that could be brutal enough to satisfy me.

(Now I am going to read the article.)

10 posted on 06/30/2007 8:20:51 PM PDT by SergeiRachmaninov
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To: logician2u
I would say TV was the cause. Reading or hearing a candidates positions encourages thought. Seeing images blurs the message and encourages an emotional response rather than a rational one.
11 posted on 06/30/2007 8:26:21 PM PDT by operation clinton cleanup
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To: SergeiRachmaninov
VICTOR GOLD: Because the impact of the sound bite mentality, the appealing to the base, which you find in both parties.

The problem with "sound biting" is that it is often done dishonestly, ripping a few words out of context.

But other times, you are able to glimpse the reality only in someone's thoughtless phrase: "We're gonna tell the bigots to just shewtUP!"

Let's keep the sound bites.

12 posted on 06/30/2007 8:30:32 PM PDT by SergeiRachmaninov
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To: operation clinton cleanup
That'ts good reasoning.

Did you happen to notice that Gold, in this interview, decries the "sound bite mentality" that, IMHO, was a large factor contributing to Goldwater's defeat in 1964.

It was bad then. It's worse today. And nearly every candidate plays it for all it's worth.

13 posted on 06/30/2007 8:34:28 PM PDT by logician2u
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To: logician2u
I was not born until 1965, so I missed out on the Goldwater campaign :( The recent defeat of the illegal amnesty bill may be a turning point of power away from the media crafted sound bite to the more well informed Internet connected citizens!
14 posted on 06/30/2007 8:46:03 PM PDT by operation clinton cleanup
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To: logician2u
the Office of Faith-based Initiative, what kind of Orwellian language is that? Faith-based initiative? That's the Office of Religion. The Office of Religious Outreach.

Bull turkey.

There is no values free public space...certainly not the schools.

The Faith-based thing is simply an effort to reachout to people where they are -- to use whatever means seem to work -- to reach people for legitimate, agreed upon societal purposes. (I say this as someone who has no personal religious impulse whatsoever.)

15 posted on 06/30/2007 8:47:49 PM PDT by SergeiRachmaninov
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To: Bismark
Both Bush and Clinton have been triangulators. That means that they have coopted the best ideas of the other side and made them their own. After 15 years of centrist government the pols are fighting very intensely over trivia, but the public feels that they are ducking the big issues.

Gold sounds like a Christy Whitman RINO to me. But he yearns for Goldwater and Moyers encourages that. However, Goldwater lost.

I associate Moyers with LBJ, though he claims Kennedy and Civil Rights. He seems as angry as the netroot people, and I asked an associate why at a recent funeral for a TV man from that crowd. I can only believe that people like him yearn for their idealism because they compromised it to ruthless and venal men like Johnson. A good, decent man like Bush is a rebuke. A rock like Cheney would make the vacillators who lost Vietnam uncomfortable.

16 posted on 06/30/2007 8:49:13 PM PDT by ClaireSolt (Have you have gotten mixed up in a mish-masher?)
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To: operation clinton cleanup
can see a day when all the Americas, North and South, will be linked in a mighty system-a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour. But we pledge, we pledge, that human sympathy-what our neighbors to the south call an attitude of simpatico--no less than enlightened self'-interest will be our guide.

this is from Goldwater's speech accepting presidential nomination in ' 64. It almost looks like the fix was in that long ago.

17 posted on 06/30/2007 8:51:33 PM PDT by gusopol3
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To: logician2u
Gold: when you take them in, when you take them in, it changes the character of the party. You win but do you win-- do you win on any principle that you stood for?

Gold is talking about the religious right and neocons. Memo to Karl Rove: This is equally true of Latino immigrants.

18 posted on 06/30/2007 8:55:24 PM PDT by SergeiRachmaninov
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To: gusopol3

It may have been wishful thinking. South and Central America were being assaulted by Communism back then, and later by drug lords. In 1964, there was not a flood of humanity rushing across the Rio Grande.


19 posted on 06/30/2007 9:00:58 PM PDT by operation clinton cleanup
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To: logician2u
Before the fun begins, let me state that I am well familiar with Bill Moyers' pedigree. I do not intend to respond to any replies intended to change the subject from the Republican Party's problems to the left-wing bias of PBS and its various and assorted luminaries

That's fine. I put up an anti-Moyers post right out of the box. It is addressed only nominally to you, because you created the thread it happens that way by default. I'll post what I like. It does not need to be legitimated as part of the thread by your responding.

20 posted on 06/30/2007 9:05:49 PM PDT by SergeiRachmaninov
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