Barry Goldwater versus the RINOs

americanthinker.com ^ | 3/19/14 | Bruce Walker

[cotton1706]

Gloomy folks today who mistrust the Republican Party should look back fifty years to March 1964, when RINOs ruled the Republican Party with an iron hand, and appreciate the miraculous campaign of grassroots conservatives who succeeded in nominating Barry Goldwater. This man was the first conservative in forty years (and the only conservative prior to Reagan in 1980) to actually fight big government, federal overreach, global government acolytes, and all the other scurrying varmints connected with the odious secular faith of leftism.

Consider just how low the Republican Party had fallen before Goldwater. Calvin Coolidge, brilliant, principled and successful as president, was the only conservative prior to Goldwater in the twentieth century. Hoover was the most popular man alive in 1920, because of his work to feed the children of Europe, but he had been so nonpolitical that both Democrats and Republicans wanted him to be their nominee. In 1952, Eisenhower would also be courted by both political parties, which spoke well of his wartime achievements but also spoke volumes about his ideological indifference.

Landon in 1936 ran as an efficient governor, rather like Hughes had run in 1916 as an honorable judge or Taft had run in 1908 and 1912 as an effective administrator. These men were hardly leftists – indeed, they were good Americans in the general sense of the term – but they spoke and behaved as if the enemy of good government was not the moral pox of leftism, but rather poor management or dishonest government.

Nixon, who carried the Republican banner three times – 1960, 1968, and 1972 – was an opportunistic politician and not a principled conservative. Those who think today that conservatives in 1968 and in 1972 rolled over for Nixon are wrong.

[Robwin]

Excellent post, BlackElk, and quite accurate.

Barry Goldwater was never the conservative that people imagined him to be and he got worse as he grew older.

One minor quibble (which has nothing to do with your thesis). The Conscience of a Conservative was actually written by Brent Bozell.... It was always my understanding it was written by one of his speechwriters, and Libertarian activist, Karl Hess. But you may be right. No biggie.

My very first vote for President was for Goldwater while sitting on a foot locker at FT Hood, TX. I voted for him because I thought he believed in the principles outlined in Conscience.... Pity he never really did.

[BlackElk]

I think you will find that Karl Hess was the author of Goldwater's speech accepting the 1964 GOP nomination (including the Cicero quote at the suggestion of Professor Harry Jaffa: "... extremism in defense of liberty is no vice... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue"). See Wikipedia on Goldwater and that L. Brent Bozell (Bill Buckley's Yale room mate and brother-in-law) was the ghost writer of The Conscience of a Conservative.

In both cases, Goldwater could take credit for his superb taste in distinguished ghost writers.

May God bless you and yours!

[BlackElk]

I failed to credit Wikipedia on The Conscience of a Conservative for the fact that L. Brent Bozell was its actual author.

[BlackElk]

I believe that Peggy Goldwater was also a national director of Planned Barrenhood (along with Dorothy Walker Bush, mother of Bush the Elder) from about 1940 until her death.

God bless you and yours!