Barry Goldwater became a crank. Remember he said Nixon had to go because "he lied to the American People". Yet he praised Clinton, who tells the truth rarely and only by mistake. He even told his party to back off on the Clinton scandals.
He endorsed Clinton for Pres in 1996 while serving as Dole's Honorary Chair.
He opposed Reagan's "Time for Choosing Speech" in 1964, but the time had been bought and was put on anyway. That speech was the most successful in US history and gained Goldwater at least 10 points at the end of the campaign. In later biographies Goldwater lied about his opposition.
He supported Nixon over Reagan in 1968.
He supported Ford over Reagan in 1976.
He supported Reagan in 1980 only after Reagan had the nomination wrapped up.
He never thanked Reagan for electing him in 1980 when it took three days to see who won the AZ race. In fact, an irate and ungrateful Goldwater lashed out at a reporter and said that Reagan should be thanking him.
He never had the ability to oversee the CIA - Bill Casey was far far too smart for him - thank goodness. And as a last disgrace, Goldwater support Bobby Inman for Clinton's CIA - another fiasco.
He helped force AZ Gov Meecham to resign. Meecham was later vindicated in court.
Father of faux conservatives
June 4, 1998
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Barry Goldwater was lavishly praised in death last weekend by the kind of inside-the-Beltway liberals who vilified him in life four decades earlier. That ironic development reflects a dire threat to the
Republican Party.
Encomiums that left-wing commentators heaped on Goldwater for abandoning his previous stance to support abortion and condemning religious conservatives are important because his views are not limited to dwindling Republican ''moderates.'' They are applauded by the non-ideological country-club set that cheers Goldwater's dismissal of political Christians, resents their intrusion into the Grand Old Party and would excommunicate what is now the Republican hard core.
Can Barry Goldwater be called a country-club Republican? That is where he wound up and really where he always was. Even when extolled as Mr. Conservative, based largely on ghostwritten rigid conservative doctrine, he was never far from anti-union cliches mouthed at the country-club bar or simplistic espousal of military values voiced during happy hour at the officers club.
What the Goldwater of the '50s and early '60s really cared about was anti-communism and anti-labor unionism, in that order. During his first senatorial stint, he opposed the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts, and later, he was uncomfortable with Ronald Reagan's tax reductions. He quickly surrendered the mantle of Mr. Conservative to Reagan once his disastrous presidential campaign concluded.
Not nearly as well educated or well read as Reagan, Goldwater was also less ideological. He once told me that he was probably in the wrong line of work and may have been better off as a major general in the regular Air Force instead of the reserve.
Although both were presidential candidates savaged by the left, Goldwater in '64 carried only Arizona and five Deep South states while Reagan in '84 carried 49 out of 50. Goldwater sought no rapport with the blue-collar and ethnic voters who became the Reagan Democrats. In 1959, he rejected a plan by his brilliant aide Mike Bernstein to broaden the conservative base by appealing to ''the forgotten American'' with innovative programs. Goldwater preferred standpat Republicanism.
So, he had no trouble assailing newly Republican Christians who have been indispensable to the party's success since 1980. Both secular (though he was a baptized Christian) and non-political, Goldwater starting in 1981 railed against the newcomers. His celebrated feistiness devolved into Christian bashing.
I find Goldwater's mind-set nationwide among upper-income Republicans. Like Goldwater, they cannot appreciate that Republicans form the predominantly anti-abortion party just as Democrats form the predominantly pro-abortion party. What, they ask me, can we do about the Christian Coalition? If they are more interested in victory than Barry Goldwater, they had better learn to live with it.
Goldwater was a patriot of the old school who could not possibly have made the mess of Vietnam that Lyndon Johnson did. He was the idol for millions of conservatives in 1964, but they were a fragment that could not change national policy. As a politician, he was indolent, disorganized and largely unfocused.
Goldwater did not, as his obituaries claimed, found the modern conservative movement. Ronald Reagan did. Sadly, this plain-spoken Westerner's legacy is as a role model for self-centered, self-satisfied country-club Republicans who don't mind returning their party to minority status so long as they are in charge of the remnant.
Robert Novak is a nationally syndicated columnist of the Sun-Times.
suntimes.com
As I said:
Barry Goldwater became a crank. Remember he said Nixon had to go because "he lied to the American People". Yet he praised Clinton, who tells the truth rarely and only by mistake. He even told his party to back off on the Clinton scandals. He later endorsed Clinton for reelection, which came as a surprise to Dole. He retracted the endorsement after the usual damage was done.
In his dotage he was much worse of course, saying stupid things because he wanted and got Media attention when he did. (No doubt he was used by a very liberal second wife, who arrived as a great shock to his family.) Gerald Ford seems to have the same affliction and is used by the same people. Both were declared brain-dead decades ago, so little will be missed. |
