It is unlikely that any nominee for President who was NOT elected ever had the lasting influence on American politics that Barry Goldwater did. That’s why he was honored, with sentiment and shouting at a recent dinner in Chicago commemorating the 25th anniversary of his nomination at the Republican National Convention of 1964.
Unlike other defeated presidential nominees, Barry Goldwater will never be just a footnote in the history books. He is the man who have political focus to the conservative movement that has flowered in the eighties.
In 1964, the liberal establishment ridiculed him as a reactionary behind the times. We now recognize that he was a man ahead of his times because Ronald Reagan was one of the happy by-products of the Goldwater presidential campaign.
In the early 1960s, Barry Goldwater’s book, The Conscience of a Conservative, defined what conservatives were FOR in practical political terms and proclaimed that conservatives have a conscience. It established him as the authentic spokesman for conservatism.
In 1964 a little paperback called A Choice Not An Echo, written by yours truly, defined what conservatives were against, namely control of Republican National Conventions by the New York eastern liberal establishment, which always supported big federal spending and an America Last Foreign policy. The book identified the dragons which conservatives would have to slay if they were ever to elect a President.
The book’s second achievement was to take the words first spoken by Barry Goldwater, “a choice not an echo,” and popularize them as the campaign slogan. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his third and fourth terms on the slogan “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.”
Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952 on the powerful slogan “Corruption, Communism, and Korea.” George Bush was elected in a landslide last year on the improbably slogan “Read my lips.”
The slogan “A Choice Not An Echo” crystallized the demand by the fledging conservative movement that the Republicans nominate a candidate for President who was decisively different from the Democrats’ candidate on the fundamental issues of federal spending and foreign policy.
In 1964, conservatives had their ideology, which had been fostered by conservative intellectuals and publications of limited circulation, and had their candidate in Goldwater. But no crop is harvested without the laborers in the vineyard.
The three million copies of A Choice Not An Echo which were sold during 1964 (without benefit of a single paid advertisement or author’s appearance on radio or television talk shows) built an army of conservative activists who would walk the last mile for their ideology and their candidate. That little paperback motivated hundreds of thousands of volunteers and converted new recruits to the conservative cause.
The book armed conservatives with the shield of righteousness so that they could withstand the outrageous media assaults of the 1964 campaign and the years of political defeats and humiliation that followed. In those years, the prevailing political theology was the notion that American voters would never elect any real conservatives as President.
A Choice Not An Echo also taught conservatives the continuing lesson of the importance of control of the Republican National Convention. The eastern liberal establishment never again regained control of Republican National Conventions, and Republican Party Platforms have grown more conservative every four years.
At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964, Nelson Rockefeller taunted the Goldwater delegates by telling them they were outside of the mainstream of American politics. In the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, the mainstream moved over and embraced conservatism. Conservatives didn’t change at all – America changed.
In 1964 it was good to be a liberal and it took political courage to call yourself a conservative. It was a political suicide to be a member of the John Birch Society.
Look how far conservatives have come in 25 years! Today, being called a liberal is a dreadful negative. The L word is a Scarlet Letter that no politician wants to be branded with, and it is political suicide to be a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 1964, in our hearts we knew we were right. The twin elections of Ronald Reagan, and last year’s election of George Bush were massive public vindication of the conservative movement Barry Goldwater started. The free market philosophy he espoused is on the march all over the world.
The Chicago celebration was sponsored by the United Republican Fund of Illinois in connection with Goldwater’s 80th birthday. His friends appreciated his returning to Chicago, where the Goldwater campaign was born in the early 1960s.
