The Republican Right Since 1945 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2011-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

9

A Choice Not an Echo

The Republican Right had finally found a pin-up boy—Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona. Goldwater presidential talk for 1964 had begun even before election day 1960. Indeed, the senator himself took time off from stumping for the Nixon-Lodge ticket to say that he might run in 1964 should Nixon fall short in 1960. After Nixon’s electoral defeat, Goldwater emerged as the spokesman of GOP conservatism, promising “to spend the next four years discovering why the conservative majority of this country has no effective voice against the radical minority—and doing something about it.”1

Goldwater did that and more in the next few years. On television talk shows and the lecture circuit, in magazine feature stories and his own writings, Goldwater set forth the conservative Republican credo. The GOP had no more popular after-dinner speaker. Goldwater’s newspaper column “How Do You Stand, Sir,” started in 1960 in the Los Angeles Times, was carried by 162 other newspapers by 1962. His books quickly became bestsellers. The Republican Right—so long without an attractive advocate—now boasted Barry Goldwater, the self-styled “salesman” of the conservative view.

This being politics, the salesman quickly became synonymous with the product. Goldwater-for-President buttons began to appear everywhere. By mid-1961, a poll of 1960 GOP convention delegates and alternates showed Goldwater to be their overwhelming favorite; 49.3 percent wanted Goldwater to top the Republican ticket in 1964, while only a combined 44.4 percent favored either Nixon or Rockefeller instead. Time called the Arizona senator “the hottest political figure this side of Jack Kennedy.”2

Indeed, in an age of image and charisma, Senator Goldwater stood as the perfect GOP match against President John F. Kennedy. Goldwater had “it.” Tall and tan with a handsome, ruggedly sculptured face, dark hornrimmed glasses, and wavy gray-white hair, Goldwater looked like a president. The Arizonan was so handsome, Senator Hubert Humphrey once spoofed, that he had landed a Hollywood movie contract—with 18th Century-Fox. Even more than his good looks, Goldwater had both tremendous charm and energy or, as it was then called, “vigor.” He not only flew jet planes, but, like Kennedy, he also wrote books. If Goldwater was not JFK’s oratorical equal, he was at least an effective speaker in informal settings—his easy, colloquial manner ably communicating his quiet sincerity.

Comparisons between this new darling of the Republican Right and Robert Taft were also inevitable. Goldwater was the first real leader of the Republican Right since Taft. Through the difficult 1950s, Right Wing Republicans had remained “Taft Republicans”—a reflection on the state of the Republican Right and William F. Knowland’s spiritless leadership. By 1960, however, GOP candidates were beginning to bill themselves as “Goldwater Republicans.”

But Goldwater and Taft each dominated the Republican Right in different ways. If Goldwater was the salesman of conservative Republicanism, Robert Taft had been its legislator. Unlike Taft, Goldwater had no major piece of legislation bearing his name. Taft had had his greatest influence in the Senate, where Goldwater, though a member of the Senate “club,” was hardly a ruling member. Goldwater Republicanism was, in fact, strongest in the House of Representatives.

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