Cruz’s Campaign Guided By Goldwater’s Theory (Hosh Posh and hogwash)

Commentary Magazine ^ | December 19, 2014 | Peter Wehner

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National Review’s Eliana Johnson, in writing about Texas Senator Ted Cruz, begins her article this way:

To hell with the independents. That’s not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz’s, it just might be.

His strategists aren’t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. According to several of the senator’s top advisers, Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout; attracting votes from groups — including Jews, Hispanics, and Millennials — that have tended to favor Democrats; and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, “not getting killed with independents.”

Ms. Johnson went on to quote a Cruz adviser saying, “winning independents has meant not winning,” with the argument being that doing what it takes to win over independents has the effect of dampening enthusiasm among the base.

This approach has been tried before. In his masterful book The Making of the President 1964, Theodore White wrote:

One must begin with the political theory that accompanied the cause Goldwater championed. The theory held that for a generation the American people had been offered, in the two great parties, a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee; and that somewhere in the American electorate was hidden a great and frustrated conservative majority. Given a choice, not an echo, ran the theory, the homeless conservatives would come swarming to the polls to overwhelm the “collectivists,” the liberals, the “socialists,” and restore virtue to its rightful place in American leadership. The campaign of 1964 was to be the great testing of this theory.

The result was that Lyndon Johnson won with what at the time was the greatest vote, the greatest margin, and the greatest percentage (61 percent) that any president had ever drawn from the American people. By the time the dust settled, Democrats held 68 out of 100 Senate seats, 295 out of 435 House seats, 33 governorships, and Republicans had lost more than 500 seats in the state legislatures around the country.

The political theory that is accompanying the cause Cruz is championing sounds similar to the one that guided Goldwater’s. To be sure, there are differences between now and then, including the fact that Goldwater was running against a popular sitting president at a time when the economy was growing and LBJ was was running as the successor of a beloved president who had been assassinated only a year earlier. Still, some of us worry the results would be too similar.

A campaign in which strategists openly declare that winning independents is a trap for losers foreshadows what’s to come. It’s hard to see how it would lead to victory in a nation in which the core supporters of the GOP are shrinking with every election (since 1996, the white share of the eligible voting population has dropped about 2 percentage points every four years). Nor is it clear how Cruz would have any special appeal to traditionally non-Republican voters. Someone like Senator Marco Rubio or Governor John Kasich would have a good deal more success, I would think.

I could be wrong, of course, and if Senator Cruz gets his way, the campaign of 2016 will be the great testing of his theory.

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“George Washington/Abraham Lincoln ticket couldn’t have defeated LBJ less than a year after the Kennedy assassination and Peter knows it.” 2nd div vet comment.

As the unofficial FR historian you should know better.

As a Goldwater active supporter around at the time The conservative values questions raised by Goldwater over the expansion of government were buried and instead he was being portayed by the media that resurrected (ala Gen MacArthur via Truman) was fear (war mongering).

The portrayal; Goldwater was a radical eager to start WWIII ready to drop the A bomb.The infamous little girl commercial pulling a daisy apart. As Johnson’s regime’s continued on with its expansion of government bumper stickers began to appear with the slogan “Don’t Blame Me/ I voted Goldwater” and the conservative movement within the Republican Party began to build traction.

As the Johnson expansion of FDR’s socialist approach began .It became clear that the democrat party was democrat in name only. It turned into a local joke (Chicago) with the wondering how Goldwater lost because of the number of vehicles sporting the “Don’t Blame Me” bumper sticker.

Up to that point there wasn’t a dimes worth of difference between the two partys and voters who for the most part were (as today) encouraged to vote for the republicans to keep the other guys honest. A viewpoint held then as now by mainly the eastern establisment republicans (whom I call GOPES, rhymes with dopes, gop elite ststists) which was demonstrated by the recent congressional vote .