Posted on 04/02/2015 9:28:25 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
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 in 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...
Today, however, there is no need to nominate Cruz in order to make the GOP conservative.... When Jeb Bush, the most conservative governor of a large state since Ronald Reagan...is called a threat to conservatism, Republicans are with Alice in Wonderland.
(Excerpt) Read more at utsandiego.com ...
Has to be the Potomac water they drink in DC!
Poor poor George Will.
A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
There is nobody in the GOP who could have beaten LBJ in 1964 as it was largely a sympathy vote for JFK, whose assassination was less than one year old at the time. LBJ had wrapped himself in the JFK coffin flag extremely well, so the comparison to 1984 is even better. Reagan was running for a second term; JFK was running for a second term.
JFK had really been assassinated less than a year before whereas Reagan's attempted assassination was nearly four years old and had faded from the public mind.
Don't forget also that one of JFK's final acts as president was to sign a massive tax cut which was just kicking in full steam by the fall of 1964.
Compared to hyperliberal George Will,
Juan Williams, demander that Americans eat ‘dog food’
for Obama, is more conservative.
Most of the "large state" (meaning top 5 or so I guess) Governors have been rank liberals or RINOs lately, so that's hardly a meaningful title. Jeb was a pretty good Governor overall. But anyone who views Jeb as a conservative, especially after he's been moving left since leaving office, has something wrong with their barometer. The Bushes have never been conservatives, they are a NE RINO family that moved south. Ronald Reagan's biggest mistake was choosing HW as VP.
George Will, another member of The Ministry Of Propaganda, doing his bit for The Cheap Labor Express to convince GOP voters that Jebster is a conservative when he is clearly NOT.
If the RNC succeeds in nominating this Democrat in an R jersey he will lose worse than McCain, in fact I predict he will lose worse than Goldwater and the GOP will become extinct in 5 years.
A party that is at war with its own voters cannot last.
GOP-RIP
“...Jeb Bush, the most conservative governor of a large state since Ronald Reagan...”
George Will - Did you lose something?
Oh yeah, my respect.
But here is the yet more essential point. For those of us who would retain the America vouchsafed to the next generation in the 1780s, it is not about victory for a particular personality; not about the quest for power or glory. Even a losing campaign that helps educate for a more hopeful future, is infinitely preferable to the election of one who pretends to serve, but constantly retreats in the face of the ongoing Collectivist assault.
In that reality, the Goldwater campaign was at least a partial success. It clearly paved the way for the Reagan "revolution." It was Reagan's beautiful TV address for Goldwater, which introduced Reagan as a serious force on the American political scene.
At worst, Will's pitch is an effort to sell surrender as a new pragmatism.
William Flax
Your comments are apt. Note my post #29.
Thank you! All these pundits proclaiming Ted Cruz can’t win conveniently forget that Ronald Reagan also “couldn’t win.” But he did. Twice.
They can play with their charts, whiteboards, and calculators all they want...didn’t do any good with McCain, or Romney, and it won’t do them any better this time.
Someone who can get people to turn out and vote in large numbers is the key. We haven’t had a true conservative run in so long it will be quite refreshing to vote for someone who cares about the people, and the country, for a change.
As Cruz gains popularity you’ll be hearing a lot of “me too’s” coming from the GOPe wannabes, and plenty of bashing from the left and the press...sure signs that Cruz has them plenty worried.
It’s George Will. What do you expect a Liberal Elitist in sheep’s clothing to say? He never accepted Reagan as President either.
Good point!
The question is whether the fifth-column media are getting their talking points from the Demonicrats or from the RINOs.
“When Jeb Bush, the most conservative governor of a large state since Ronald Reagan.”
I guess Will has started partaking of medicinal marijuana...
Common Core
Open borders
180 degree turn on RFRA just this morning.
This is conservative?
GOP establishment members like Will always make a point of mentioning Goldwater’s election results and not mentioning Reagan’s election results. It just goes to show that you cannot trust a “conservative” like Will to be honest. This is the guy who hosted a dinner for Obama and other GOP-E “conservatives” and came away impressed with him. If these guys are so smart, why did it take them so long to figure out what Obama really is? I believe people like Will and the rest of the DC Uniparty establishment are completely out of touch with Americans. They have no clue how people outside the Beltway think and don’t care to learn.
” The Bushes have never been conservatives, they are a NE RINO family that moved south.”
Modern day carpetbaggers. We have one in AZ who was just elected. Martha McSally.
In DC that question doesn’t matter. the uniparty runs them all.
Great book, BTW, but I didn't know conservatives could write such titillating sexy passages, LOL.
George Will, the “genius” who wrote this article, supported Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush over Reagan and claimed in 1979 and early 1980 that Reagan was too conservative to win.
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