Multiple requests to post a comment I made in yesterday's piece by voidstuff on Steve Schmidt into a freestanding diary have prompted me to go ahead. (Over the past 24 hours my anger about my phone interaction with a Tillis staffer about the USPS is back under control but not enough to write anything coherent on the topic. Yet) What follows is my original comment about Goldwater which provides some information some either never knew or have forgotten. I have also included a few responses I made to other comments in the thread I started. I guess when it comes to the GOP or former GOP folks with The Lincoln Project, or RVAT its worth bearing in mind how the GOP got to where it is started with Goldwater and I believe Goldwater tried to (unsuccessfully) rectify the unintended consequences of the modern conservative movement he started.
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(Original Comment)
Goldawater was no liberal. Libertarian for damned sure and for pure ones like him the seeming contradictions (to staunch adherents of both Liberalism and Conservatism) that go along with it.
I’ve read some pieces over time where some conservatives try to rationalize some pretty hard to believe things about Goldwater given the image he evokes in most people’s minds. The old line so many love to toss out that Goldwater actually won the 64 election but that it took until Reagan in 1980 for the votes to be counted is outrageous bullshit. Reagan could never have won without joining forces with the zealots of the religious right-wing religious leaders and their flock. What would wind up pissing them off and at times even consider dropping organized activism was Reagan not doing enough to move their agenda. Not that Reagan didn’t throw them some pretty big bones because he did. It was the only way he could keep them on board and voting for the GOP and that dismantle the New Deal economic agenda. So they got anti-gay stuff like defining the HIV breakout as a problem for gays only, brought on by their “sinful lifestyle” and some conservative judges. But it was nowhere near enough for them. What they always wanted, and which we have been seeing in spades is someone like Trump who wouldn’t just say, but via judges and Justices and with a wide range of pronouncements and policy be a mouthpiece and activist for their extremism.
Goldwater saw through their bullshit from the very beginning. The new brand of Republican/conservative that was willing to “marry” the religious right was anathema to him. He despised Jerry Falwell Sr. and the rest of them. And Falwell & the others returned the contempt. Goldwater held views about keeping the government out of people’s private lives that were and remain infuriating to liberals. But he was consistent and incredible as it is to believe he held views that are even more infuriating to the conservative “Christians” who’ve taken over the GOP and its agenda. Goldwater’s wife Peggy founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona back in the 1930s! He didn’t see anything wrong with what Planned Parenthood was about. Even more incredibly, in the 1950s when his daughter was in college and engaged she became pregnant and while she looked forward to one day being a wife and mother she wasnt ready for that at that point in her life. So, when it was illegal to do so he arranged for her to have an abortion, something which when they revealed it decades later he was unapologetic for — again on the principle that such decisions were none of the government’s business.
Frankly, on reproductive issues Reagan who was after all once a Democrat and part of the Hollywood scene (he even was —“horrors” to conservatives — divorced from his first wife (actress Jane Wyman and he was the one that dumped her because he was the one with the roving eye) and surely knew and didn’t have a problem with people he knew and worked with who at a time when it was illegal arranged for or had abortions, or would when birth control become available use it even though it was orginally illegal in most places as well! How many movies did Reagan make with actors he knew to be gay? He sure as hell didn’t mind working and even socializing with them, at least once upon a time. The difference between Reagan and Goldwater is that unlike Goldwater who wouldn’t suck up to the religious zealots Reagan was willing to pretend he too was aghast at abortion, birth control and homosexuality. And worse, willing to work that (although again not as much as the wingnuts wanted) into his governance of the country as President.
So in the end, dislike Goldwater if you want to (as I do) over his refusal to get on board with Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s or willingness to consider use of nukes in Vietnam (and if you don’t know Westmoreland quietly made contingency plans for their use at Khe Sanh in 1968 — IOW Goldwater was far from the only person to consider use of “small yield” tactical nukes in that war) but as I said he was pretty damned consistent in the old-school conservative beliefs that taxes should be low and government should be limited as much as possible — and damned sure shouldn’t get into stuff in people’s personal lives like making laws or policies that restricted their ability to worship (or not) how they wanted, love who they wanted whether it was someone of the opposite gender or their own, and to stay out of people’s lives and decisions when it came to whether and when to have a child.
And he lived those things personally.
People are talking these days about the unlikely friendship between Biden and McCain which was a true, deep friendship despite sometimes profound political differences. Goldwater had something similar with JFK. The two of them had actually kicked around the idea of traveling together on the same plane and holding a modern version of Lincoln-Douglas debates only actual back and forth discussions of policy. It might well have happened had JFK not been assassinated, and I think it would have set a standard that would have made us into a far better country that we’ve become.
History has a funny way of bouncing around in the early drafts, and it will probably take quite a few more generations to write a fairly definative review but when I see and hear some of the stuff coming from Republicans (or former ones who’ve become “independent”) with the Lincoln Project or RVAT even if most of them sheepishly avoid taking responsibility for creating the conditions that allowed a Donald Trump to grab hold of the GOP its pretty clear they realize they are culpable in what’s happened to our country even if they are loathe to admit it out loud. So, for the moment they are trying to make amends. And I think they are wishing they and those who came before them had tried to be more like Goldwater’s version of conservatism and kept the religious right zealots at arm’s length. And the racists too since like Goldwater they realize that the racism in those folks carries with it a modern Nazi type white supremacism.
One question---were Goldwater’s views shaped differently because he was from the West and not the South?
Goldwater had a western independence ideology that seems different from southern independence if that makes sense.
Broken down in simplicity the western frontiersman is saying---hey government, leave me alone because I got this and don’t need you---versus the Dixiecrat---hey government, leave me alone and don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.
He was no Dixiecrat. It’s worth keeping in mind that Arizona was still a territory in 1909 when he was born. It wasn’t until 1912 that the former Arizona Territory became an actual state — the last one in the Continental “lower 48” in fact. As a young state, and not at all well-populated during Goldwater’s formative years and early life it’s fair to say his Libertarian views were shaped by that. The whole western “We don’t need no damn gubmint” (unless a rancher wanted to lease federal land for grazing at rock bottom prices instead of buying their own land!) attitude was likely ingrained in his psychological DNA as it was (and remains) in so many people in those mountain west states.
It certainly manifested in his policy views once he got into elected politics. Like others who’ve commented I don’t look back on him as a bad man or person, just one with some bad beliefs on some things he shouldn’t have ever held because on some things we wouldn’t have and can’t survive unless we take the path NOT of being fifty states but one country.
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And finally, Golden owl comment closed with a rhetorical question:
And isn’t it ironic, that Reagan was also no religionist. Seldom seen at any church, he too promised the destruction of Roe v Wade and still Roe exists. No, just a means by which to get the Evangelicals to vote for them. Who is using who? Rhetorical question.
I chose to go ahead & answer as follows:
I think it’s fair to say Reagan and RWNJ evangelicals used each other. The latter came to realize it and as I noted at one point seriously contemplated seriously downsizing their attempt to be a major, organized force in federal elective politics. Some, and I think of Ralph Reed (Tom DeLay’s “love child” as I sometimes have thought of him) in particular became discouraged enough to actually walk away. For a while at least. Personally I don’t think Reagan gave two-shits about those people’s pet issues. He tried to do just enough to keep them on the hook but clearly erred on the side of doing too much just to be (for him and the GOP) safe.
The difference with Trump is that the leaders know damn well he’s a purely transactional guy. They give him unconditional support and deliver their flock to the polls via bullshit about his “transformation” into being one of them, and in return he gives them the judges and Justices they always craved. Judges and Justices who will tear down the wall of separation that was from the beginning intended to separate church from state. Who will overthrow reproductive freedoms. Who will allow laws to criminalize and imprison people for living life as what they are — LGBT. And so on. They delivered on their end and since Trump realized early on how much money he could grift to prop up his family business for one of the few times in his life he kept his own word with them. For all his ego he’s known ever since Mueller was appointed his re-election might not be assured despite the advantages of incumbency. Seeing how close a call Bush 43 had back in 2004 was enough warning for him when combined with seeing his people pleading guilty, and all the other scrutiny he was getting in the Presidential spotlight his survival instinct kicked in.
Since it wasn’t costing him any actual money, just judicial appointments and policy declarations he was more than willing to hold up his end of the devil’s bargain he made with KKKristians.
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My thanks to those who thought enough of what I wrote to say it was worthy of being published on its own. If others who didn’t read the original diary that started all this find it informative then so much the better.