Almost President by Scott Farris

Author:Scott Farris
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2011-12-06T08:00:00+00:00

In the years since his defeat and more so since his death in 1998, two years after he suffered a massive stroke, Goldwater has occupied a strange place in American politics, admired by liberals as well as conservatives, but fully embraced by neither. A 2007 reissue of The Conscience of a Conservative, which features a foreword by conservative commentator George Will and an afterword by liberal environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., exemplifies this. Will focuses his praise on Goldwater as a catalyst of conservative ideas, particularly the argument that conservatism, not liberalism, preaches ideals higher than simple material gain. Kennedy specifically absolves Goldwater of any role in the formation of the new, Southern-oriented Republican Party, instead citing the “thuggery” of a host of power-mad Republican consultants who are guilty of “the hijacking of Goldwater’s rational conservatism” and interjecting divisive social issues into the American political debate, neglecting Goldwater’s role in the very same.

Goldwater remains a great example of how we misread the impact of losing presidential campaigns. In the wake of his historic loss, some said that Goldwater had both destroyed the Republican Party and “broken the back” of the conservative movement. Of course, the opposite turned out to be true. The Goldwater campaign, Kevin Phillips wrote, “was a Rubicon for the Republican Party,” and in crossing that line, Goldwater fundamentally altered both who and what the Republican and the Democratic Parties stood for.

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