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THE GOLDWATER MYTH
New Majority ^ | February 27, 2009 | David Frum

Posted on 03/06/2009 4:35:47 PM PST by yongin

It's CPAC weekend - the grand rallying of the conservative clan here in Washington. It's a season where conservatives from across the country meet to compare notes, share stories, and seek political consensus. The consensus forming this year however is an ominously dangerous one - ominously dangerous to conservatives themselves that is.

Conservatives live in thrall to a historical myth, and this myth may soon cost us dearly.

The myth is the myth of the Goldwater triumph of 1964. It goes approximately as follows:

In 1964, after years of watered down politics, Republicans turned to a true conservative, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Yes, Goldwater lost badly. But in losing, he bequeathed conservatives a national organization – and a new champion, Ronald Reagan. Goldwater’s defeat opened the way to Reagan’s ultimate triumph and the conservative ascendancy of the 1980s and 1990s.

This (the myth continues) is the history we need to repeat. If we can just find the right messenger in 2012, the message that worked for Reagan will work again. And even if we cannot find the right messenger, losing on principle in 2012 will open the way to a more glorious victory in 2016.

The Goldwater myth shuts down all attempts to reform and renew our conservative message for modern times. And it offers a handy justification for nominating a 2012 presidential candidate who might otherwise seem disastrously unelectable. Altogether, the myth invites dangerous and self-destructive behavior by a party that cannot afford either.

What happened in 1964 was an unredeemed and unmitigated catastrophe for Republicans and conservatives. The success that followed 16 years later was a matter of happenstance, not of strategy. That’s the real lesson of 1964, and it is the lesson that conservatives need most to take to heart today.

1964 was always bound to be a Democratic year. The difference between Barry Goldwater’s 38.5% candidacy and the 44% or 45% that might have been won by a Nelson Rockefeller or a William Scranton was the effect on down-ballot races.

Republicans lost 36 seats in the House of Representatives in 1964, giving Democrats the biggest majority in the House any party has enjoyed since the end of World War II. Republicans dropped 2 seats in the Senate, yielding a Democratic majority of 68-32, again the most lopsided standing in any election from the war to the present day.

This huge congressional majority - call it the Goldwater majority - liberated President Johnson from any dependence on conservative southern Democrats. In 1964, only 46 Senate Democrats voted for the great Civil Rights Act; 21 opposed. Without Republican support, the Act would not have passed. (And indeed while 68% of Senate Democrats voted for the Act, 81% of Senate Republicans did.)

While dependent on southern Democrats, President Johnson had to develop a careful, pragmatic domestic agenda that balanced zigs to the right (in 1964, Congress passed the first across the board income tax cut since the 1920s) with zags to the left (the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 which created Head Start among other less successful programs).

Then came the Republican debacle of November 1964. Goldwater's overwhelming defeat invited a tsunami of liberal activism. The 89th Congress elected in 1964 enacted both Medicaid and Medicare. It passed a new immigration law, opening the way to a surge of 40 million newcomers, the overwhelming majority of them from poor Third World countries. It dramatically expanded welfare eligibility and other anti-poverty programs that together transformed the urban poor of the 1950s into the urban underclass of the 1970s and 1980s.

Suppose history had taken a different bounce in 1964. Suppose somebody other than Sen. Goldwater had won the Republican presidential nomination. Suppose his narrower margin of defeat had preserved those 36 Republican seats in the House – or even possibly gained some seats. (The big Democratic gains in 1958 and 1962 were ripe for a rollback in 1964 – and indeed were rolled back in 1966, when the GOP picked up 47 seats in the House and 3 in the Senate.)

Under those circumstances, the legislation of 1965 might have looked a lot more like the more moderate legislation of 1964. The Voting Rights Act would surely have passed, and so too would some form of health insurance measure for the poor – a measure supported by the American Medical Association and health insurers as well as by congressional liberals. But Medicare might never have happened, or might have taken a less costly form. The immigration bill might have been more carefully written so as to achieve its declared purpose: eliminating racial discrimination in immigration without expanding the overall number of immigrants from the modest level prevailing in the 1950s and early 1960s.

True, the liberal triumph of 1964 set in motion the train of disasters that laid liberalism low in the 1980s. But those disasters followed from choices and decisions that liberals made – not from some multiyear conservative grand strategy for success in 1980. It was not Goldwater who made Reagan possible. It was Carter. Had Carter governed more successfully, the Goldwater disaster would have been just a disaster, with no silver lining. And there was nothing about the Goldwater disaster that made the Carter failure more necessary, more inevitable.

And anyway, as the years pass, the consequences of Reagan’s victory look more temporary and provisional, at least in domestic policy – while the consequences of Goldwater’s defeat look more enduring and more consequential. The Reagan tax cuts are long gone. Medicare is still here.

It’s important for Republicans to absorb and remember this history as they prepare to make their next political choices. Right now, Republicans are gripped by a strong martyr complex. They want to stand up for their beliefs, damn the consequences – in fact the worse the consequences, the more it proves the rightness of our beliefs. If this mood persists further into the 2012 cycle, we will pay a heavy price. 2010 is already shaping up as an inhospitable year for Republicans, especially in the Senate, where the map favors the Democrats. 2012 could be much better – unless we doom ourselves by our own bad choices.

It is this alternative possibility of success or failure down the ballot as well as up that makes it so urgent to disenthrall ourselves of the 1964 myth. Goldwater’s defeat was a prelude to nothing except defeats on the floor of Congress in 1965-66. As the next presidential cycle begins, our priority should be to identify presidential candidates who can run strongly in every region of the country – not because we expect to win every region of the country, but because we want to help elect Republican congressional candidates in every region of the country. Our present strategy is one that is paving the way not merely to another defeat at the presidential level, but to a further shriveling of our congressional party –and an utterly unconstrained Obama second term that will make LBJ’s ascendancy look moderate and humble in comparison.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Politics/Elections; US: Arizona
KEYWORDS: 1964; 2020election; barrygoldwater; carter; davidfrum; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; election2020; elections; flowerad; frum; goldwater; gop; jimmycarter; mediawingofthednc; myth; partisanmediashills; presstitutes; reagan; ronaldreagan; smearmachine
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To: yongin

He completely ignores the Kennedy Assisignation, which was the biggest influence on the election.


21 posted on 03/06/2009 5:16:37 PM PST by nickcarraway (Are the Good Times Really Over?)
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To: yongin

Nice try RINO. We just are not buying it anymore. As soon as you start with the update our “message” stuff, just can’t read ... any .. more ... Can’t ......


22 posted on 03/06/2009 5:17:33 PM PST by central_va (Co. C, 15th Va., Patrick Henry Rifles-The boys of Hanover Co.)
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To: yongin

We need someone running on conservative principles who can win in the general. In short we need both principles and electability.


23 posted on 03/06/2009 5:23:12 PM PST by TAdams8591 (When Obama FAILS, America succeeds!)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla
I was on the Board of NY Youth for Goldwater.

And I was a precinct captain for Goldwater in Cincinnati.

My first presidential campaign...

The Reagan Revolution started with Goldwater. And Frum has no idea. Without Goldwater, there wouldn't have been a successful and important National Review to hire his sorry ass.

24 posted on 03/06/2009 5:28:01 PM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: okie01

Well he has left NRO to go to the RINO - centrist Daily Beast, with Christopher Buckley, among others. They have been making many snarkey comments about Buckley, Brooks, and Frum at NRO these days.


25 posted on 03/06/2009 5:34:30 PM PST by Lucius Cornelius Sulla ("men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." -- Edmund Burke)
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To: okie01
And I was a precinct captain for Goldwater in Cincinnati.

Say is it true that turkeys can't fly? OK, bad WKRP reference.

26 posted on 03/06/2009 5:36:03 PM PST by Lucius Cornelius Sulla ("men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." -- Edmund Burke)
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To: yongin
1964 was always bound to be a Democratic year. The difference between Barry Goldwater’s 38.5% candidacy and the 44% or 45% that might have been won by a Nelson Rockefeller or a William Scranton was the effect on down-ballot races.

Pferdenscheiße

27 posted on 03/06/2009 5:36:35 PM PST by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
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To: ConservativeMind
there was nothing about the Goldwater disaster that made the Carter failure more necessary, more inevitable.

Nope - Carter did that all on his own.

Frum discounts the Flower ad against Goldwater.

Agreed, but I would also point out that a lot of people voted on emotion, just like today. A lot of them stupidly voted to continue the legacy of a murdered President. LBJ was lucky, too.

28 posted on 03/06/2009 5:40:00 PM PST by Hardastarboard (The Fairness Doctrine isn't about "Fairness" - it's about Doctrine.)
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To: yongin
Hey, Frum . . . what's your point?

If nothing else, the 1964 Republican Convention was momentous for propelling Ronald Reagan onto the national stage. Someone (it may have been Mark Levin) replayed his speech at the convention on the radio a while back, and what really stood out for me was just how few REPUBLICANS today are willing to publicly stake out those positions.

Here's an amazing irony . . . as I was listening to Reagan's speech and trying to think of which public personality today reminded me most of what that speech stood for, the name that came to mind over and over again was Rush Limbaugh.

29 posted on 03/06/2009 5:48:07 PM PST by Alberta's Child (I'm out on the outskirts of nowhere . . . with ghosts on my trail, chasing me there.)
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To: yongin
Analysis based on amnesia or a selective remembrance of actual history.

I had to laugh about Sean Hannity and others claiming how "this is the year American Journalism died," in 2008. Not even close. If you think the liberal media was in the tank for 0bama, you didn't live through the 1964 election.

Johnson received a huge sympathy vote from the Kennedy assassination, and Goldwater received a tremendous amount of negative coverage as a result of his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Goldwater's stand was a principled conservative stand for Federalism. Of course, it was portrayed as racism pure and simple. At that time the South was not Republican, so Goldwater's position hurt him in what were then Republican strongholds in battleground States.

Add to this that in 1964 the highest career military people (except LeMay) were unwilling to buck the civilian leadership on the complete inadequacy of our war effort in Vietnam; consequently most Americans were not tuned into the requirements of the conflict and Goldwater's approach sounded crazy, while Johnson's (who knew the truth, and lied) sounded measured and sensible.

Reflect on this: in the 20th century, the supposedly conservative party produced exactly two conservative presidential nominees and one libertarian. One conservative -- Reagan, and one libertarian -- Coolidge were elected. The other Republicans you can pick were advocates of activist government except for Eisenhower (who was NOT a conservative.)

So, the truth hurts: the 2008 election was NOT an aberration. The Republican Party almost never nominates conservatives. We nominate McCain types, and then get lectures for idiots like Frum, who tells us we've failed because we haven't nominated enough of them.

30 posted on 03/06/2009 5:51:08 PM PST by FredZarguna (ill... Douche.)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla
They have been making many snarkey comments about Buckley, Brooks, and Frum at NRO these days.

May they keep it up.

Some people deserve public disdain by their peers.

31 posted on 03/06/2009 6:02:19 PM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: Alberta's Child

Frum is wishing that Giuliani won in 2008. He’s upset that the GOP did not clear the field for him in the primary.


32 posted on 03/06/2009 6:03:26 PM PST by yongin (The Messiah's economic policy is a Katrina waiting to happen)
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To: catpuppy
Pat Buchanan was right on the money when he said that the American public simply didn't have the stomach to elect what would have been their third President within a twelve month span ( in the aftermath of the Kennedy assasination ).
33 posted on 03/06/2009 6:09:56 PM PST by Cyropaedia ("Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principal of evil...".)
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To: Cyropaedia

Absolutely. Kennedy was in trouble in the polls. The pubbies were split, and Goldwater always came across as a cranky old guy, but Kennedy getting assassinated was the best thing that ever happened to Johnson politically.


34 posted on 03/06/2009 6:12:51 PM PST by Richard Kimball (We're all criminals. They just haven't figured out what some of us have done yet.)
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To: yongin

Whatta buncha pelosi.


35 posted on 03/06/2009 6:31:33 PM PST by oldsalt (There's no such thing as a free lunch.)
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To: yongin

“They want to stand up for their beliefs, damn the consequences – in fact the worse the consequences, the more it proves the rightness of our beliefs”

i will agree with him on this point ... know plenty of right-wingers who love lose elections.


36 posted on 03/06/2009 6:50:25 PM PST by campaignPete R-CT
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To: catpuppy

“The assassination of President Kennedy killed Goldwater’s chances.”
Absolutely correct. AUH2O ran against LBJ AND the ghost of JFK


37 posted on 03/06/2009 6:52:19 PM PST by aumrl (even Mc Lame wudda been better than this Obomination)
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To: okie01
Frum was born in 1960. In Toronto. He comes from a generation that believes: if it didn't happen to me, it didn't happen.

Good one! Of course, we had some from that generation (Sarah Palin, for example, my kid brothers, for another) who were born with their heads screwed on straight because their parents had their heads screwed on straight.

Those of us born in the mid-boomer years (roughly 1953-1960) got to grow up on the tail end of Viet Nam and when the Ford/Carter recession was in full bloom with severe competition for even the poorest of jobs. Some of us were stupid enough to trust Carter and vote for him in 1976. Fewer of us would repeat that error in 1980.

So let it be with Zer0.

38 posted on 03/06/2009 7:00:14 PM PST by Vigilanteman (Are there any men left in Washington? Or, are there only cowards? Ahmad Shah Massoud)
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To: yongin

Mother always said that Goldwater told the truth as to what he’d do in Vietnam, LBJ lied through his teeth and won the election.


39 posted on 03/06/2009 7:15:53 PM PST by swmobuffalo ("We didn't seek the approval of Code Pink and MoveOn.org before deciding what to do")
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To: swmobuffalo
Mother always said that Goldwater told the truth as to what he’d do in Vietnam, LBJ lied through his teeth and won the election.

A common post-election line was "They told that if I voted for Goldwater we'd end up in an unwinnable war on the Asian mainland. Well, I voted for Goldwater anyway. And, sure enough, we did."

40 posted on 03/06/2009 7:21:50 PM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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