- Included among the Political Analysis Posts List.
- Barry Goldwater was one man who could always be counted on to bluntly tell the truth, often with a generous dose of salty language.
Martin Winfree
December 13, 2018
·
Shared with Public
POLITICAL ANALYSIS, PART VIII:
Returning to my political hero to this day, Barry Goldwater was one man who could always be counted on to bluntly tell the truth, often with a generous dose of salty language; and with all of the changes in the way that I view the world, I never lost my affection for him. You know who else was an ardent supporter of Barry Goldwater in her younger days? Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Some years after his Presidential loss, Goldwater returned to the Senate and eventually became an elder statesman who was universally respected and admired from coast to coast. Remarkably and incredibly, Barry Goldwater accomplished this not by mellowing or by polishing his image, but by being the same way he had always been. Goldwater truly had one of the most colorful careers in the history of modern American politics. I just scanned a long obituary online that brought it all back for me.
Barry Goldwater split with the GOP establishment on many major issues: He supported allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military, called for an end to discrimination generally against gays and lesbians, strongly decried the rise of the religious right within the Republican Party, took a pro-choice position on abortion, and denounced calls to restore organized school prayer in schools as an unwarranted intrusion by Government into private lives.
Many leaders in today’s GOP have tut-tutted about these positions and have said that Barry Goldwater would be viewed as a moderate these days. A lot of people who really should have known better didn’t know what to make of this either; a feature article on washingtonpost.com from 1994 is entitled “Barry Goldwater’s Left Turn”.
I found a post on a website called BlueNC.com – which describes itself as “an independent website committed to progressive politics in North Carolina” – that talks about this and gathered some quotes from Goldwater about gay rights, the religious right, and other topics. In the introductory material, the post says: “Nicknamed ‘Mr. Conservative’, [Barry Goldwater] represents what the Republican Party should have been before selling out to the Religious Right – a party dedicated to small constitutional government, equal opportunity for all, free markets, and individual liberty.” If that isn’t a definition of “conservatism”, I don’t know what is – that is sure as hell what it means to me. Yet the Republican Party has strayed far from this arena in recent decades.
You want some quotes (courtesy of this post on BlueNC.com)? I don’t know how I can talk about Barry Goldwater without listing some. I won’t go so far as to say that these quotes and others like them are unique, but I cannot think of a single person on the political landscape during my lifetime who spoke this way even occasionally. This is how Goldwater talked about everything, not just these subjects.
“Mark my words, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
“I think every good Christian ought to kick [Jerry] Falwell right in the ass.” (after Falwell opposed the 1981 nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, saying “Every good Christian should be concerned”).
“The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay. You don’t have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that’s what brings me into it.”
“Gays and lesbians are a part of every American family. They should not be shortchanged in their efforts to better their lives and serve their communities. As President Clinton likes to say, ‘If you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll be rewarded’ and not with a pink slip just for being gay.”
“The oldest philosophy in the world is conservatism, and I go clear back to the first Greeks. . . . 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 away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.”
When a lot of Southern politicians announce that they are switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, they often puff themselves up and say something like: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” And that is how I feel about it also: I didn’t leave the Conservative Movement, the Movement left me. If the Republican Party still believed in the principles that Barry Goldwater espoused, I would probably have been a Republican all along, and to this day.
Not long after I arrived in college (probably in late 1969), I saw an article that one of my friends had taped to his dorm room wall entitled “Barry Bombs Away” that was a wide-ranging interview where Barry Goldwater talked about the legalization of marijuana, getting the hell out of Vietnam (his words), and other bombshell ideas. I was shocked at the time but eventually realized that he was right in basically everything that he said.
Barry Goldwater also talked in that interview about Harry Truman, how he always told it like it is, and how he was probably one of our greatest Presidents. Mind you, this was one of the most prominent Republicans in the country praising a Democratic President. Hardly anyone thought that about Truman back then, but it is the consensus opinion about him now. Harry Truman was the President who had the legendary sign on his desk that said: “The Buck Stops Here”.
John McCain had the same kind of maverick spirit as Barry Goldwater, and I was always a fan. How could you help it? The 2008 Presidential election is the first one in my lifetime where I would have been happy either way, whether Barack Obama won, or whether John McCain won – ordinarily, I would NOT have been happy no matter who won 
. Now that John McCain has passed, the other Arizonan Jeff Flake is the only Republican Senator who seems to have any balls at all. There are Democrats from Arizona that I also think a lot of, especially Gabrielle Giffords (she is a hero in my book), but also Stewart Udall, Mo Udall, and Janet Napolitano.