Barry Goldwater

2015-02-09T18:50:20Z

Redbloodrightwing: /* 1964 Presidential campaign */

[[Image:BarryGoldwater.jpg|right]]

'''Barry Morris Goldwater''' (1909-1998) was a United States [[Senator]] (1953-65 and 1969-87) and the [[Republican]] nominee for [[President]] in 1964. He reinvented the Republican Party after the defeat of [[Richard M. Nixon]] in 1960, benefiting from a national grassroots conservative effort that overcame the Eastern liberal Republicans and [[Nelson Rockefeller]] in 1964. Goldwater was strongly anti-[[communist]] and called for a rollback of its influence around the world, asking, ''Why Not Victory.'' He called for an end to liberal domestic policies as supported by the [[New Deal Coalition]]. Goldwater was defeated in a sweeping landslide in 1964 by incumbent Democrat [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]. Goldwater lost the leadership of the conservative movment to [[Ronald Reagan]], but returned to the Senate where he continued to support a strong defense. Unlike libertarians, Goldwater was hawkish on foreign policy, and Goldwater became irrelevant in his later years as he criticized social conservatives like [[Jerry Falwell]].

==Early Life==
Goldwater was born into an Episcopalian family with [[Jewish]] heritage on his father's side. He was born in Phoenix, Arizona on January 2, 1909. He attended the Phoenix public schools, Staunton Military Academy, and University of Arizona for one year. He began his business career in 1929 at his family's department store. He served in the the Second World War and later in the National Guard.

==1964 Presidential campaign==
Barry Goldwater entered the United States Senate in 1953. During the 1960 Presidential election there was a campaign among [[conservative]]s to draft Goldwater for President, a race in which [[Richard Nixon]] ultimately won the Republican nomination and [[John F. Kennedy]] narrowly defeated him for President. The campaign to draft Goldwater to run for President continued in the next election cycle. In 1964 Goldwater seriously sought the nomination, not running for re-election to the Senate that year, and was successful, defeating New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He was defeated in the general election by incumbent [[Lyndon Johnson]]. After the election he ran successfully again for the Senate in 1968.

Lyndon Johnson was successful in part because of continued public sympathy over the [[John F. Kennedy assassination]], the use of [[negative advertising]] such as the notorious "daisy" TV ad which raised fears of [[nuclear war]] if Goldwater were elected, and negative media coverage of some of the conservative groups supporting Goldwater, such as the [[John Birch Society]]. Johnson ironically ran as a "peace candidate" but shortly after the election drastically escalated U.S. involvement in the [[Vietnam War]].

The 1964 Goldwater campaign helped usher in the modern conservative movement in the United States. The political careers of both [[Phyllis Schlafly]] and [[Ronald Reagan]] got a big boost during the campaign. Schlafly wrote a book, ''[[A Choice, Not An Echo]]'' during the campaign which was widely distributed and launched her career as a conservative political activist. ''A Choice, Not An Echo'' detailed the machinations of the [[moderate]] to [[liberal]] East Coast wing of the Republican Party to hand-pick Presidential candidates (Nixon, [[Wendell Willkie]], [[Dwight Eisenhower]], etc.) and called for conservatives in the party to organize to counter this wing of the party and their "kingmaker" approach to nominating candidates. The book was a rallying call for conservatives in the party and helped Goldwater win the nomination. Reagan gave a speech as part of a "TV for Goldwater-Miller" television ad campaign which made him an up and coming star among conservatives, eventually leading to his own series of Presidential campaigns in 1968, 1976. and 1980, the last of which successfully landed him in the [[White House]]. The 1964 Goldwater campaign was also followed by the rise of a growing conservative campus movement during the 1960s led by [[Young Americans for Freedom]], the rise of a small [[libertarian]] movement which also supported Goldwater but would later split with conservatism over the [[draft]] and [[drug]] policy, and modern conservative movement approaches such as [[direct mail]] organizing.

The 1964 Goldwater campaign also marked the first time since before the [[Civil War]] that the states of the Deep South, angered by the liberal Johnson's support for civil rights, broke from the [[Democratic Party]] and gave their electoral votes to the Republican nominee. Goldwater broke with some GOP senators when he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.<ref>Taylor Branch, ''Pillar of Fire'' 356-357 </ref> In the Senate, he strongly supported both the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts.<ref>Barry Goldwater, Where I Stand (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964)</ref>. Nonetheless, Barry Goldwater accomplished a task that, until then, had been seen as physically impossible — he won five states in the Deep South for the Republican Party, which had been seen for the past hundred years as the party of Abraham Lincoln and the "War of Northern Aggression." Even more incredibly, those five states were, apart from Goldwater's home state of Arizona, the only states that he won in what was otherwise a Democratic landslide, turning established political battle lines on their heads. He was able to do this solely because of his voting record against anti-racism legislation versus the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, who was in favor of civil rights.

The South had, until that point, been a solidly Democratic voting bloc, often called the "Solid South." Nixon, taking note of this, campaigned on subtle states' rights themes in 1968 and 1972 in an attempt to keep the Deep South in the Republican column. That Southerners could be persuaded to vote Republican in presidential races by the 1960s is attributable to the greater power of race than class by that time. For the first half of the 20th century, white Protestant voters in the South tended to be quite populist on economic issues, forming an important part of the New Deal Coalition and supporting government infrastructure projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority. However, they were rabidly reactionary on race and other social issues, often preventing Franklin D. Roosevelt and the northern liberal wing of the Democratic Party from taking action against lynching and segregation.

As the South grew in affluence after World War II, class tension began to fade. At the same time, the civil rights movement that began in the 1950s and gained momentum in the '60s put race into sharper perspective, while other cultural changes in the '60s (the sexual revolution, the counterculture, the New Left) also drove white religious conservatives in both the North and the South away from the Democrats. The latter in particular placed another once-solidly Democratic voting bloc, the working-class Catholic voters of the northern industrial cities, into play, something that Nixon and future Republicans would also take notice of.

==Quotes==
In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention of 1964 Goldwater called out:
:I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!<ref> Thomas Paine wrote in 1795, "Those words, 'temperate and moderate,' are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice." Paine, "Letter to the addressers on the late proclamation against seditious writings." in ''The Writings of Thomas Paine,'' ed. Moncure D. Conway, (1895) vol. 3, pp. 94–95 </ref>

:"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism." (Acceptance speech)

==Social Views==
Social issues were low in priority for both Goldwater and the conservative movement in the 1960s, and no one supported him for (or even knew) his stance on social issues. After 1980, with his first wife waning in health and long after Goldwater was a conservative leader, he began to express liberal opinions on some social issues. Bill Buckley said of Goldwater:
:''Conspicuous here was his defense of Supreme Court decisions involving abortion, gay rights, and the separation of church and state. Most followers of the senator were surprised, and abashed, especially at his defense of abortion.''[http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/wfb200412101327.asp from ''National Review,'' Dec. 10, 2004]

After his wife of nearly 50 years died, and when Goldwater was nearly 80 years old, he became more vocal in his liberal social opinions. After his retirement in 1987, Goldwater described the conservative Arizona Governor [[Evan Mecham]] as "hardheaded" and called on him to resign, and two years later stated that the Republican party had been taken over by a "bunch of kooks". In a 1994 interview with the ''[[Washington Post]]'' the retired senator said, {{cquote|When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like [[Pat Robertson]] and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.}}

In response to [[Moral Majority]] founder [[Jerry Falwell]]'s opposition to the nomination of [[Sandra Day O'Connor]] to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, "Every good Christian should be concerned", Goldwater retorted: "Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."<ref>Ed Magnuson, [[Time Magazine]], [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,954833-2,00.html ''The Brethren's First Sister''], July 20, 1981. Retrieved 1/1/07.</ref>

Goldwater was long an outspoken critic of presidents of both parties, harshly criticizing [[Richard Nixon]] at a pivotal time during [[Watergate]]. Goldwater criticized the arms to Iran that became public in 1986 as part of the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] as "the god-damned stupidest foreign policy blunder this country's ever made!'",<ref>[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-374469737793037291&q=Robert+MacNeil "Archive of American Television Interview with Robert MacNeil Part 5 of 14" (video)]</ref>. Otherwise, Goldwater thought that Reagan was a good president.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLATQAU-Hw0&feature=related YouTube - Charlie Rose - Goldwater tribute/]</ref>

In 1992, Goldwater remarried a much younger divorcee. He then disagreed further with [[conservatives]] on social issues. He criticized the military's ban on [[homosexuality|homosexuals]]: "Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of [[Julius Caesar]]."<ref>"Ban On Gays Is Senseless Attempt To Stall The Inevitable", ''Los Angeles Times'', ''Washington Post''. Online at [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts/bulgarians/barry-goldwater.html ]</ref> He also said, "You don't have to ''be'' straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to ''shoot'' straight." A few years before his death he went so far as to address the right wing, "Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican party much more than the Democrats have."<ref>[[The Betrayal of America]] by [[Vincent Bugliosi]], 2001</ref>

In 1996, Goldwater told Republican presidential candidate [[Bob Dole]], whose own positions lacked real support from conservatives: "We're the new liberals of the Republican party. Can you imagine that?" In that same year, with Senator [[Dennis DeConcini]], Goldwater endorsed an Arizona initiative to legalize [[medical marijuana]].<ref> [http://www.reason.com/news/show/30148.html Prescription: Drugs] Reason Magazine</ref>

==Family==
Goldwater was married twice. He was married to [[Margaret Goldwater|Margaret Johnson]] from 1934 until her death in 1985. They had four children: Joanne, Barry, Michael, and Peggy. In 1992 Goldwater, age 83, married Susan Shaffer Lechers, age 51.<ref>http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special25/articles/0602GoldwaterFacts01-ON.html</ref> They remained married until his death in 1998.

==Bibliography==
*Mary C. Brennan, ''Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the G.O.P.'' (1995)
*Edwards, Lee. ''Goldwater'' (1995). biography
*Goldberg, Robert Alan. ''Barry Goldwater'' (1995), the standard scholarly biography
*Hodgson, Godfrey. ''The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America'' (1996).
*Matthews, Jeffrey J. "To Defeat a Maverick: The Goldwater Candidacy Revisited, 1963–1964." ''Presidential Studies Quarterly.'' 27#1 1997. pp 662+.
*Perlstein, Rick. ''Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus'' (2001) Very well researched and written narrative of the 1964 campaign.
*White, Theodore, ''The Making of the President: 1964'' (1965)
==Primary sources==
*Goldwater, Barry. ''Conscience of a Conservative'' (1963) highly influential manifesto ISBN 0-89526-540-0
*Goldwater, Barry. ''Why Not Victory? A fresh look at American policy'' (1963)
*Goldwater, Barry. ''Conscience of a Majority'' (1971) ISBN 0-671-78096-4
*Goldwater, Barry. ''Arizona'' (1977) ISBN 0-938379-04-6
*Goldwater, Barry. ''With No Apologies: The Outspoken Political Memoirs of America's Conservative Conscience'' (1979) ISBN 0-425-04663-X
*Goldwater, Barry. ''Goldwater'' (1988) ISBN 0-385-23947-5, autobiography
*Gallup, George H. ed. ''The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971,'' vol. 3. (1972)
*Hess, Karl. ''In A Cause That Will Triumph: The Goldwater Campaign and the Future of Conservatism'' (1967), memoir by BG's speechwriter

==References==
<references/>
== Also See ==
* [[Conservative links]]

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Barry Goldwater