A favorite meme in the attack of moderate Republicans and the liberal media against conservatives is that we have gone so overboard on ideological litmus tests that neither Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan could be nominated in today’s Republican Party. Our opponents are attempting to kidnap these two Lions of the right to use as cudgels against their spiritual heirs.
Goldwater’s geriatric jeremiads against the religious right and Reagan’s loosening of abortion restrictions as Governor and tax increase as President are most often cited by the left as proof that “even” those two Godfathers of modern conservatism would “compromise” and “bend” – making them unacceptable to conservatives today
In the words of my candor mentor, Colonel Sherman T. Potter of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital,” horse hockey”.
The Gipper’s seeming apostasy is easily dealt with. He realized about a nano-second after both of those actions that they were mistakes, and spent the rest of his career describing them as the biggest mistakes of his political life. To those of us who actually knew and worked for Ronald Reagan the idea that he was a closet moderate or that he would not be a leader of or cheerleader for today’s Tea Party is laughable.
Barry Goldwater’s late-in-life statements need to be balanced against his actual votes which were almost uniformly conservative, and need to be considered in light of the influence of his decades-younger second wife Susan. She apparently was a good companion to Barry, reportedly made his twilight years easy and happy, and that is all good. She also was an unabashed liberal and her influence on his politics is obvious, and that was all bad.
That said, the later-day Barry Goldwater is irrelevant to this discussion. He didn’t matter then and he doesn’t matter now. Who matters is the man who changed America – the Barry Goldwater of the late 50s and early-to-mid 60s who inspired millions and launched the modern conservative movement. It was the Barry Goldwater of Conscience of a Conservative and the 1964 campaign who activated hundreds of thousands of previously inactive citizens, many of whom (including yours truly) are still at it today.
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