"B>liss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very
heaven!" So wrote Wordsworth of how his generation felt on first
hearing news of the French Revolution.
And so it was when news came the night Barry Goldwater defeated
Nelson Rockefeller in the California primary of 1964 and was now the
certain nominee of the Republican Party.
From the day following Richard Nixon's defeat in 1960 until the coup
at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in '64, where the Arizonan was
nominated, the Goldwater movement (SET ITAL) was (END ITAL) the
conservative movement. It was the political expression of
conservative revulsion at the "Me, too" Republicanism of the 1950s
and of our dream of a new fighting faith that would one day drive
the New Deal liberals out of Washington and lead America to victory
in the Cold War.
It was not to be. Barry Goldwater was crushed in November, after
having been demonized by the press as a hater, a racist, a fascist
and a nut. But inside the GOP, Goldwaterism had triumphed.
In 1960, Nixon had traveled to New York to make his peace, and
platform concessions, to Rockefeller in a "Pact of Fifth Avenue"
that Goldwater would call "the Munich of the Republican Party." But
by 1965, Nixon knew that the center of gravity in the party had
shifted south, west and to the right and that now the crucial
endorsements were those of Strom Thurmond and Barry Goldwater.
If there was a single cause that united and propelled the new
conservatism, it was anti-communism, the belief that the United
States was floundering in its Cold War with a hostile ideology and
empire on the march. "Why Not Victory?" Goldwater asked in the title
of one of his slim books, and it perfectly reflected the sentiment
of the conservative movement.
Soon after Goldwater's crushing defeat, the title of "Mr.
Conservatism" passed to the man who had best given voice to the
Goldwater philosophy in that '64 campaign: Ronald Reagan, who in
1980 would lead the movement to power and adopt the policies that
would win the Cold War for the United States and the West.
With the death of the patriarch, it is time to inquire of the
condition of the movement Goldwater called into being in Chicago in
1960, when he stood before the Republican Convention and roared,
"Let's grow up, conservatives ... we can take this party back."
Today, that conservative movement is not only a house divided, it is
a house shattered, almost a spent force.
For upon what do conservatives any longer agree? They both supported
and opposed expanding NATO and intervening in Bosnia. They are
divided on whether the NAFTA and GATT trade deals are good for
America. They disagree on immigration and term limits. On abortion,
the heart of the Republican Party is strongly pro-life; Goldwater
was laissez-faire. Social and cultural conservatives hold that a
society that legitimates the homosexual lifestyle is neither moral
nor healthy. Goldwater came to favor gays in the military.
To rekindle the old unity and spirit, Republicans have lately sought
to rally around the core causes of conservatism: limited government,
low taxes, free markets, a strong national defense.
Yet Senate Republicans voted 19-1 in committee for the $516 billion
tobacco tax, and not a single government agency, not even the
National Endowment for the Arts, has been closed by this Congress.
Federal taxes are at record levels; the GOP is under pressure from
its big-business financiers to produce $18 billion more in bailout
money for the International Monetary Fund; and the size and strength
of U.S. armed forces continue to dwindle.
Conservatism triumphed in the GOP in 1964, and in the nation in
1980, because Goldwater and Reagan unapologetically championed the
ideas -- and reflected the fighting spirit -- of the army on the
ground. But even the staunchest defenders of the leaders of this
Congress cannot say they are doing that today.
Before conservatives can recapture America, they will have to answer
basic questions: What does it mean to be a conservative in America
in 1998? What are we willing to go down to defeat fighting for, as
Barry Goldwater did so very long ago? The original conservatism
sprang up in angry protest against the bipartisan establishment that
was indifferent or hostile to what it believed. Thus, the successor
of the conservative movement of 1960 to 1990 must surely rise the
same way. To find it, we should be listening to the country, not
looking to Washington.
