Republican Character by Donald T. Critchlow

Author:Donald T. Critchlow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Published: 2018-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Freshman Senator Goldwater Draws Organized Labor’s Wrath

Goldwater entered the Senate in 1953 hoping to get an appointment to the important Armed Services Committee. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Robert Taft assigned him to the Labor Relations Committee because he said the party wanted a businessman there. Goldwater claimed not to know much about organized labor, but this assignment turned out to give him the national attention that made him into a star in the party. It also earned him the enmity of organized labor. On the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, chaired by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, Goldwater openly attacked Walter Reuther and the United Automobile Workers for violent tactics during a strike at the Kohler Manufacturing Company in Wisconsin. In a radio address, Goldwater described Reuther as America’s number-one enemy of freedom, a remark he immediately apologized for making, but the damage had been done. Goldwater became organized labor’s number-one enemy.

In the Senate, Goldwater gained a reputation for being charming but too blunt spoken to be effective in the legislative process. Goldwater deferred the heavy lifting of legislation to Arizona’s senior senator, Carl Hayden, a longtime family friend.26 Goldwater emerged as a national voice for conservative causes: opposition to the recognition of mainland China, criticism of the United Nations, and demands for congressional investigation into Communist infiltration into government and organized labor. He cosponsored the Bricker Amendment, which called for constitutional restriction of presidential war powers. Opposed by the Eisenhower administration, the Bricker Amendment failed. He gained further national attention for denouncing Eisenhower’s first budget as a “dime store New Deal.” Eisenhower did not like the remark but remained friendly with Goldwater, one of the few conservative Republicans in the Senate Ike did not despise.27

Goldwater’s strong views on what he considered the international and domestic threat Communism posed placed him in the anti-Communist camp in the Senate. He was friends with McCarthy, although he believed McCarthy often overstated claims of Communist subversion.28 He had gotten to know McCarthy in the 1940s when the future Wisconsin senator visited Arizona for health reasons. McCarthy campaigned for Goldwater against Mc-Farland, and the two became drinking buddies once Goldwater moved to Washington. In early 1954, when McCarthy faced an impending censure by the Senate, Goldwater arranged through McCarthy’s lawyer Edward Bennett Williams to sneak into the Bethesda Naval Hospital where McCarthy was recovering from elbow surgery. They pleaded with McCarthy to sign a letter stating that he regretted having shown discourtesy to fellow senators and thereby avoid a likely censure vote. A drunken McCarthy refused. On December 2, 1954, sixty-seven senators voted to condemn him. Behind the scenes, the Eisenhower administration supported the censure as part of an effort to overcome what Eisenhower described as a “reactionary and recalcitrant splinter group”—far-right conservatives—in the GOP.29

In 1958, Goldwater came up for reelection. He had barely won his first race and, as the junior senator, was vulnerable to defeat. Meanwhile, McFarland had carefully positioned himself to regain his Senate seat.30 His first step in his comeback was to defeat incumbent Howard Pyle for the governorship in 1954.

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