Barry Goldwater's critics saw today's Republican extremism in 1964

[Nevilledog]

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R.L. Stollar
@RLStollar
"Too often people who studied conservatism focused on the ideas, the Kirks and the Buckleys. When really, such people were relevant to only a small swathe of the people driving the conservative bus."

~@SethCotlar in this important piece for @DiscoverFlux

Barry Goldwater’s critics saw today’s Republican extremism in 1964
The conspiracism, Christian nationalism, and pandering to racists we see today in the GOP was brought into the party long before Trump
flux.community
2:43 PM · Oct 13, 2021

https://flux.community/seth-cotlar/2021/10/barry-goldwaters-critics-were-more-right-they-knew-about-republican-extremism

As the 1964 Republican convention approached, many political observers warned that right-wing extremists were about to take over the Grand Old Party. The mainstream media rang the alarm bells, churning out a stream of documentaries, books, and articles with titles like “Thunder on the Right,” “Danger on the Right,” and “Barry Goldwater: Extremist of the Right.” The GOP — whose banner had been carried by stodgy caretakers like Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s and self-described moderates like Thomas Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon since WWII — was poised to pick as their Presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, the polarizing darling of the American right. When Goldwater delivered the now famous line in his acceptance speech, “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” his supporters leapt to their feet and cheered for a full minute, some fixing menacing stares on the moderates in their midst who were less enamored of such fighting words. The Goldwater enthusiasts taunted skeptics with buttons that said “In your heart you know he’s right.” His critics countered with “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.”

How could this happen? How could the party of stolid, respectable competence — more suit-wearing Kenosha banker than bolo-tie sporting Phoenix cowboy — hand the keys over to a shoot-from-the-hip iconoclast who opposed almost everything the federal government did apart from preparing to fight a world-obliterating nuclear war? In the closing scene of Dr. Strangelove, released to critical acclaim in January of 1964, Slim Pickens’s character rides a nuclear warhead to his death, hooting and hollering and waving his cowboy hat like a good freedom-loving American. For the majority of Americans who had not yet jumped on the Goldwater bandwagon, watching the GOP convention at Oakland’s Cow Palace in July 1964 felt like watching Slim Pickens ride gleefully toward the inevitable mushroom cloud that spelled his (and the world’s) destruction. There’s good reason the anti-Goldwater daisy ad struck a chord with the American electorate.

But it wasn’t just Goldwater himself who inspired feelings of puzzled disdain among the political commentariat of 1964, it was also his supporters, the “deplorables” of their day. The South’s most ardent segregationists, for example, flocked to Goldwater’s standard because of his outspoken opposition to the landmark Civil Rights Act. Such folks had filled roadsides in the South in recent years with “impeach Earl Warren” billboards to express their revulsion at the Chief Justice who’d spearheaded the Brown v. Board decision. And then there were the reactionary industrialists who thrilled to Goldwater’s virulent anti-unionism. These important funders of Goldwater’s campaign thought union leaders like Walter Reuther posed as great a threat to American freedom as Nikita Khrushchev. Goldwater’s grassroots operation, meanwhile, was staffed by an army of paranoid John Birchers who saw America-hating “comsymps” (communist sympathizers) stealthily taking over school boards, churches, the media, the Democratic and Republican Parties, and virtually every other institution in the country. Goldwater was also backed by retired General Edwin Walker, the “better dead than Red,” trigger-happy anti-Communist zealot who was parodied in Dr. Strangelove by the character of General Ripper, of “precious bodily fluids” fame.

If in 1964 you thought the US should pull out of the “satanic UN” because it posed an existential threat to your church and your family, then Goldwater was your man. If in 1964 you thought disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy was a great American patriot who had been given a raw deal by a witch hunting press then again, Goldwater was your guy. Not all Goldwater supporters were deeply reactionary racists or antisemites who believed in outrageous conspiracy theories, but it appeared that the nation’s most outspoken, reactionary bigots and conspiracy theorists were all Goldwater supporters. Was it unfair to associate Goldwater with the excesses of his most ardent supporters? Or was it naïve to overlook the dark and familiar, illiberal energies that had gathered around the figure of Goldwater and forcefully propelled him to the head of the Republican Party, despite the best efforts of the party’s more moderate establishment? In 1964, no one knew what the future held and thus no one knew just how concerned they should be.

*snip*

[johnp3907]

1. "Because his hat's in the ring Where Westbrook Pegler once was king

Now he's too left wing“

[Grins]

2. Because the extreme Reich did one thing...

Showed up and voted in the primaries. For Goldwater. And that is still true today. The GOP loves to eat its own.

[tanyev]

3. Kick.

[Mad_Machine76]

4. In his later years

Goldwater, ironically, became a voice of reasoning, warning about allowing religious extremists into the GOP (which they clearly didn't heed and actually embraced hard) and supporting lifting the ban on gay soldiers in the military when the matter was under discussion in the early 1990's. I believe that he was also part of the group of Senators whom told Nixon that he was finished.