The ‘half-Jewish cowboy from Phoenix’

August 26, 2006

You know the [tag]Republican Party[/tag] has shifted to the far-right when [tag]Barry Goldwater[/tag] starts to sound like a [tag]liberal[/tag].

An interview in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine with C.C. Goldwater reveals that her HBO film to be aired Sept. 18 paints her late grandfather, Sen. Barry Goldwater, “as a kind of liberal,” with testimonials from Al Franken, Sen. Ted Kennedy, James Carville and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In fact, Hillary campaigned for [tag]Goldwater[/tag] in 1964 in his race for president against Lyndon Johnson. “Hillary was a Goldwater girl,” says the filmmaker, interviewed by Deborah Solomon. “She passed out cookies and lemonade at his campaign functions.”

Solomon calls Goldwater “a half-Jewish cowboy from Phoenix.”

The film — made on a budget of $800,000 — will note that the straight-talking Sen. Goldwater, author of the classic “The Conscience of a Conservative” (soon to be reissued by Princeton University Press) favored abortion rights and allowing gays in the military, and refused to attend President Nixon’s funeral because he “cheated” the country.

In the film, former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradley calls Sen. Goldwater “an unsung hero of Watergate” for helping convince Nixon to resign.

I’d also add that Goldwater hated the religious right movement (in 1981, responding to Jerry Falwell’s statement that all good Christians should be concerned about the Supreme Court nomination of Arizonan Sandra Day O’Connor, Goldwater said, “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass”), didn’t care for Newt Gingrich (Goldwater said he “talks too much”); and snubbed far-right senators like Jesse Helms (whom he described as “off his rocker”).

In 1996, Goldwater joked to Bob Dole, “We’re the new liberals of the Republican Party. Can you imagine that?” As it turns out, yes.

What I like about Goldwater was that he got trounced in the presidential race and set conservatism back a few years. Principled conservatism is not much better than unprincipled conservatism.

  • As long as progressives feel compelled to embrace conservative Arizona politicians, I think a dead one is the best choice.

  • In 1964 I had a second-storey apartment just above the Goldwater headquarters on Irving Street in San Francisco. I contacted Democratic headquarters downtown and got a 75′ canvas “Johnson-Humphrey” banner and hung it under my windows, just over Goldwater’s place. I thought the building owner might make me take it down, but he proved to be a good Democrat.

    It really is amazing what’s become of the GOP in the last 25 years. From their tradtional Big Business stance they became Libertarian and Small Government. Then they morphed into the pro-racist party, followed by Catholic-Evangelicals, and finally into the Bush Crime Family. They really have become a collection of nutcases. What amazes me most is that anyone votes for them at all.

  • Goldwater had strong conservative principles. That’s what makes him so different from today’s “conservatives”, who have no principles.

  • I well remember in 1964 being worried Goldwater would start a war. Then, during the campaign, I stopped being worried about Goldwater and started being worried about Lyndon Johnson. That’s because I was in the Navy, and at the time was working over the operation orders for “Rolling Thunder II”, which was to be the sustained bombing of North Vietnam, “upon suitable provocation,” and – at first in September 1964, that “suitable provocation” was to happen no later than the middle of October (an “October surprise”). “Rolling thunder I” had been a plan promulgated in June 1964 for a “limited series of air strikes against North Vietnam”, also on “suitable provocation,” which is now known to history as the Tonkin Gulf “Incident”. And then, by late September, it was set back to mid-November (Johnson having discovered he didn’t have to cover his ass with Goldwater, since running as the “peace” candidate was working). Eventually it happened on February 7, 1965, and became the “wider war” Johnson had promised not to take us into. A wider war that went on by increments and eventually killed 55,000 of my generation, wounded a million more, killed several million southeast Asians, and set back the United States in ways we are still discovering 40 years later and left a scar on America that will only heal when the last of my generation is buried, and then it will still be there like the scar of the Civil War.

    Yes indeed, Lyndon Johnson certainly was the better man over Goldwater.

    In July 1965, three B-52s were sent to bomb South Vietnam jungles, against targets that couldn’t be found, on order of the first Texan Deciderer-in-Chief. After the war, General Vo Nguyen Giap stated for the record that the North Vietnamese government always knew that the day the Americans sent B-52s over Hanoi would be the day the war would have to stop. By December 1972, when that finally happened, North Vietnam was the deadliest anti-aircraft environment in history and 12 of the B-52s were shot down. In July 1965, the North Vietnamese didn’t have an air force and lacked any anti-aicraft guns that could even come close to the B-52 at altitude. Had those three B-52s flown over Hanoi – even without dropping bombs! – things would have been vastly different. There would have been no “wider war.”

    Somehow, I think had Goldwater been President, those B-52s would have flown over Hanoi – without A-bombs – and 41 years of history would be 180 degrees different.

    Whatever else one wants to say about Barry Goldwater, in retrospect it is obvious he was the last “small r” republican politician, a man of real personal integrity, a man of the Old Republic who would not have promoted the Empire the way all the others have since.

    And yes, he beats hell out of the current “Arizona conservative” various “progressive” morons are swooing over.

  • Ed – your unfurled banner made me laugh out loud. You have been a good old-fashioned sh-t disturber since day one!

  • Goldwater was a libertarian, plain and simple. Therefore, he didn’t have much patience for those like the Religious Right who tried to legislate morality. Plus he was a gay rights supporter because of his gay grandson, who he didn’t try to hide in the closet like Cheney.

  • Homer (#8),

    I don’t know if I’ve told this before (probably have), but in the 1960 campaign Nixon came to San Francisco to give a speech in Union Square, just across Powell from the St. Francis Hotel (where the Republicans always stayed; the Dems went to the Fairmont up the hill). A friend of mine and I wanted to hear the speech, but the square was jam-packed with people. There was, however, a “ban the bomb” line snaking through the mob. Leland and I got into that line until we were about ten feet from the speaker’s platform. At that point we left the line and waited for Tricky Dick to show up.

    When the introductions were finished and Nixon was just about to begin his speech, Lee and I broke the silence by shouting very loudly in unison “Hey, Dick, tell us another dog story”. Most in the crowd knew we referring to the “Checkers speech“. Democrats applauded us, but a pack of Republican women right in front of us turned around and confronted us with a tirade of “Have some respect!” “He’s the Vice President of the United States?” “Communists!” “Traitors!” and the like. Nixon had to ask them to shut up so he could go on with his dopey speech.

    After we left there we went down to the GOP Market Street campaign headquarters and engaged the “Nixon girls” — a bunch of floozies in strapless evening gowns passing out campaign literature — in a sidewalk debate about their candidate. After just a few minutes of this the campaign people realized we were making mincemeat of them, rushed out and herded the girls back inside, to the cheers of the crowd that had gathered.

    I will say this though. Politicians, even paranoids like Nixon, were more approachable in those days. It might have been that same visit (I know it was the same campaign), I saw a double line of men in suits standing on the steps into the Fairmont. I put my head between two them to see what it was all about. At that point Nixon jumped out of his limo, waving and smiing, followed by Pat and daughters Trish and Julie. Up the stairs they went, and so did I, just behind them. Right through the opened revolving door, across the lobby, and into the elevators which were all being held. On the sixth floor we all got off and walked into the Presidential Suite. I must’ve been eating hor d’oeuvres there for fifteen minutes (I was a starving student after all) before one of the Secret Service came over and asked who I was. I told him I edited the USF Foghorn (campus newspaper) and would like an interview with that man (pointing to Nixon). I was abruptly ordered to leave, but apparently they did some checking because, back on campus, I received a telephoned invitation to come down for a 15 minute interview (which I, of course, accepted; published the story right away).

    Lotta laughs, but when I think of those times compared with today’s, the gutless Democrats in particular, I could cry.

  • I think the quote was “Jerry Falwell can kiss my ass.”; KMA was also a favorite of LBJ’s, btw.

  • Ed:

    That story could only have taken place in a country that hadn’t seen a political assassination in 30 years (and then the Wrong Guy – Mayor Cermak – got shot).

    I think back to those days and find it amazing that life could have been the way it was. When I was overseas, I would go out in civilian clothes, and think nothing of going to places in Third World cities where people could easily be killed for their pocket change (and were), secure in the knowledge they’d never do it to an American (and I was mostly right). I look back on those days as if it was a different planet in a different universe.

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