The Case for Goldwater

...Knowland lost by a million votes in 1958 and Senator Thomas Kuchel, who won by over 700,000 in 1962...

...The term "young intellectuals," is used rather loosely, for the author never bothers to specify who they are...

...Thus de Toledano's thesis that Goldwater Republicanism is The Winning Side simply does not stand up under close scrutiny...

...Reviewed by GEORGE F. GILDER Editor, "Advance: An Independent Journal of Republican Thought" In the last half-century the moderate-wing of the GOP has controlled most of the party's national conventions...

...Liberals should not be unconcerned about this possibility, even if they are Democrats who are sure Goldwater would lose overwhelmingly...

...But he neglects to mention that in 1958, when the GOP lost 44 seats in the House, the party suffered its worst Congressional defeat since the Depression...

...The one clear lesson of 1958 is that advocacy of right-towork laws is suicidal in heavily unionized states...

...Yet since four Southern states went Republican in 1960 and others went to independent electors, Kennedy's dependence on the South is not as great as is often supposed...

...In Revolt on the Campus, a book by M. Stanton Evans, one of de Toledano's colleagues on the National Review, we get a closer look at a few of them...

...In addition the farm vote, a factor of declining importance in American politics, is hardly likely to go to Goldwater, who advocates the elimination of subsidies...

...They reduce to the following: • Among the possible Republican candidates, only Goldwater can exploit Southern disaffection with Kennedy...

...The abounding inconsistencies and contradictions provide continuous entertainment...

...Kennedy carried only six of these states, and by margins ranging from one percentage point down to three tenths...

...And while the Southern Republicans did acquire their greatest vote in the cities, despite little organization they also made large gains in the rural areas through well documented, flagrantly segregationist appeals...

...The Republicans will lose the Negro vote regardless of whom they choose as a candidate, but only Goldwater can exploit the new discontent with Kennedy's civil rights activities among Northern urban and suburban whites...

...The rural areas, more racist, are also more Democratic...

...In 1959, one might just as easily have compared the Democratic performance of 1958 with that of 1954 and claimed a new Democratic consensus which would produce overwhelming Congressional victories and a Presidential landslide in 1960...

...After four chapters of highly tendentious views on Republican history—in which Abraham Lincoln appears as a secondary figure and the Free Soilers emerge as the original, definitive Republicans—de Toledano advances somewhat more persuasive arguments for the Goldwater candidacy...

...is supporting Rockefeller...

...De Toledano also says State Chairman Ray Bliss has made Ohio impregnably Republican, yet the state has two Democratic Senators and the Democrats made important gains in the 1963 elections...

...The fact is that while no Republican candidate could carry the Negro vote, the polls indicate that Rockefeller would get at least 20 per cent more than Goldwater...

...He succeeds, however, only in casting further doubt on right-wing principles and authenticity by basing his optimism for the Arizona Senator's candidacy on a white revolt in the South and in the cities...

...If he refuses he will . . . lose the support of Jews who have contributed works and loyalty to the Democratic cause since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt...

...The farmers may account for only 8 per cent of the population, but they dominate in 22 states having a total of 221 electoral votes...

...One of these rare cases apparently was 1952 when, according to de Toledano, Nixon actually saved Eisenhower from defeat...

...In support of this argument the author points out that the Republicans did far better in 1962 than in 1958, the previous off-year election...

...Negro anti-Semitic actions will cause [the Jews] to seek some redress from President Kennedy...

...De Toledano's other arguments are mostly wishful speculation...

...In spite of its obvious weaknesses and the ease with which one can deride them, de Toledano's book deserves critical attention, if only for its plausible array of statistics in support of Goldwater's invincibility...

...In his latest book, Ralph de Toledano, the worshipful biographer of Richard Milhous Nixon, tries to show that Goldwater and only Goldwater can win for the Republicans in 1964...

...Indeed, Gallup polls indicate that any Republican—except perhaps Rockefeller—would gain electoral votes in the South...

...But only on very rare occasions does the second man's popularity rub off on the first...

...Barry Goldwater happens to be eminently equipped for the Presidency—but he is also precisely the candidate who would represent that consensus and reestablish conservatism in the high places of government...

...Republican urban losses are mostly the result, not of ideology, but of an almost total absence of organization...

...If its arguments arc accepted by Republicans they will nominate him, his ideas will be lent respectability, and one of our two political parties may become a force of jingoism and reaction...

...De Toledano's thesis is simple enough: "that the Democratic coalition formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt has begun to come apart and that a new conservative consensus has the potential strength to replace it...

...The Negro trend toward overt anti-Semitism is one that can torpedo Kennedy hopes...

...Moreover, Goldwater's extreme positions, particularly his continued support for a national right-to-work law, would probably result in his losing many large Northern and Western states won by Nixon in 1960...

...The wheat referendum indicates wide dissatisfaction with President Kennedy among farmers...

...in that year, with right-to-work on the ballot, the Republicans lost heavily in both Ohio and California...

...In any case, it is by no means certain that Goldwater can even carry Texas, with its enormously growing Negro and Latin vote—an estimated 100,000 new voters will be registered in that state before the election in a campaign manned by some 10,000 party and union workers...

...Though de Toledano says former Senator William F. Knowland has now brought unity to the GOP in California behind Goldwater, the opposite is true...

...Further amusement is provided by de Toledano's repeated references to "the young intellectuals who pack the Goldwater rallies...

...They include a number of college newspaper columnists and editors, and such elites as Dallas Roper, age 26, "managing editor of the Monroe [Louisiana] Morning World, described by one prominent journalist as 'the most important paper in the state after the New Orleans, Shreveport, and Baton Rouge papers.' " Another is "30-year-old Tom Kelly," editor of the presumably less important, though doubtless equally impressive, newspaper in Jennings, Louisiana...

...Yet, as we now know, Kennedy's victory was anything but a landslide, and the Democrats lost 21 seats in the House...

...The Winning Side is the first major effort to prove that Goldwater can win the Presidency for the GOP...

...Only Goldwater can galvanize party workers to the effort necessary for victory...

...The saving grace of the book, once its pervasive speciousness is penetrated, is the author's resourcefulness in arguing and at the same time undercutting his own case...

...One of the most important of the Northern groups, says the author, is the Jews...

...Nor is there any evidence that white resentment against civil rights in the North is widespread enough to counteract the 15 per cent gain in the Negro vote for Kennedy which would automatically occur if Goldwater were the Republican candidate...

...But they do not necessarily prove that Barry Goldwater has a very good chance of winning it...

...Even if Kennedy carries all the Northern and Mid-Western states he carried in 1960, he will lose the election if he loses the South...

...Republican advances in the South are not the result of the race issue...

...These arguments, in sum, do suggest that Kennedy may conceivably lose the election...

...De Toledano impugns a Gallup poll indicating that a Rockefeller-Goldwater ticket would meet crushing defeat, for example, by arguing that a Vice-Presidential candidate "can occasionally lose votes for the Presidential nominee...

...The right-wing, though often conceded to be the more principled and the more authentically Republican segment of the party, has been considered, even by many of its adherents, to be incapable of winning a national election...

...The largest Republican vote occurs in the Southern cities because of the urban Southerner's economic conservatism...