The Goldwater Emetic

...Of course, many Right-wingers will be damaged too...

...The catastrophe of the Barry Goldwater candidacy is now confined to the Republican party...

...Except in the South, where minor gains may be possible, the GOP would be decimated in congressional and local elections...

...Then the Governor emerged commandingly and swept so invincibly toward California that other party leaders felt they should accommodate Goldwater in order to prevent a bitter internal rupture after his presumed defeat...

...They even banished George Washington Lee, long Mr...

...Of Republican businessmen and publishers, off the reservation and down on the ranch with L.B.J...

...But it was this very weakness as a campaigner which led to his defeat in New Hampshire at the hands of Henry Cabot Lodge and thus led the press to dismiss him as a serious candidate...

...If Goldwater were defeated badly enough (and in view of Governor Wallace's vote it is not certain he would be), he himself may be disposed of, but his followers will remain entrenched in the power positions of the Republican party...

...It is likely—but not absolutely certain—that the Democrats could meet any of these crises this year without losing...

...They would nominally endorse Goldwater on the grounds of the importance of maintaining the two-party system and maintaining their own influence within the ReDublican party...

...After constant disavowals, he now seems to have accepted Goldwater's proposal for a short 3,000 word statement of principles...

...Polls in California reveal that he is the first choice of only 28 per cent of Republican voters in the state...

...They see Goldwater's nomination as a kind of emetic...

...After their fling with Scranton...

...There are more marginal districts in New York alone than there are in the entire South...

...Moreover, some 250 prospective Goldwater votes on the first or second ballot come from Northern and Western metropolitan states where the Senator has virtually no chance of winning...

...and something might happen to Lyndon Johnson...

...for unlike the Convention itself, the committee is formed on the basis of equality of states...

...Because of the Committee's composition, however, insistence on its independence is tantamount to assurance of a Right-wing platform...

...There are liberals in both parties who regard the prospect with satisfaction...

...The progressive Republicans are now mobilizing themselves to extort a moderate or at least a meaningless platform from the National Convention...

...But a Goldwater Presidency remains nonetheless a possibility, however distant...

...The Goldwater Emetic By George F. Gilder It is a commentary on the plight of those determined to remain party-line Republicans today that in the end they will have to wrap themselves in the American flag and hope for national disaster...

...are gravely threatened...

...The Rightwing gospel would receive greater exposure, and as the official view of the Republican party, greater authority, than it has ever had before...

...In two of the states, Ohio and California, Republicans met comprehensive and catastrophic defeat...

...Of a candidate, moreover, who at the head of the ticket will wreak disaster on his own party in the most populous states of the country...

...Its simple-minded appeal should not be underestimated...

...One might suppose that the committee's composition would provide sufficient pressure for a pro-Goldwater document...

...Indeed, the GOP of Dwight Eisenhower and Thomas Dewey has been dying for the last four years without knowing it, without even seeming to care, until now, when it stands and stiffens to receive the coup de grace...

...and the Governors' Conference tumbled from rhetoric into bathos...

...Some 65 per cent of his secure delegate strength comes from Southern states which elect just nine per cent of Republican senators (i.e., John Tower of Texas, and Kentucky moderates Thruston B. Morton and John Sherman Cooper), seven per cent of its congressmen, and no Republican governors at all...

...But the Right-wingers will nonetheless be able to consolidate their control of the party in many states across the country...

...And so it went...

...There were only four states which showed a higher total vote in 1958 than in the Presidential year of 1960, and each of these had rightto-work proposals on the ballot...

...The primary battles once again would involve the future control of the party...

...the civil rights demonstrations of the summer might erupt into violence and evoke widespread white hostility...

...and after California, fearing personal defeat, waxing indignant at the Senator's ascendancy only to subside like the rest...

...Those who might have mobilized against Goldwater, had he won as predicted in New Hampshire, assumed he was through, and returned to their personal affairs...

...Vice Chairman in 1960, and author of a book, The House Divided, which stands with Barry Goldwater's Why Not Victory as one of the most fatuous Right-wing tracts on foreign policy to be published in the last five years...

...Hiram Fong (Hawaii), Kenneth Keating (N...

...Right-wing conservatism might become stronger no matter what happens to Goldwater in the election...

...Far from being an "authentic" or representative voice, the committee is in fact grossly unrepresentative of the Party's real makeup...

...The emetic will purge the party of progressives, not Right-wingers...

...The Negro vote in the South is increasing rapidly and now exceeds two million, or 15 per cent...

...It is likely to win converts...

...Republican of Tennessee, who memorably seconded Robert Taft's nomination at the 1952 convention...

...The Senator must be the first Presidential aspirant to win his party's nomination largely by virtue of his weaknesses...

...There is the possibility, moreover, that the nightmarish Rightwing dreams might come true...

...According to all indications—barring the Right-wing nightmares—Goldwater would meet crushing defeat...

...and he would then be in a good position to claim the nomination for the 1968 campaign...

...and it now rallies behind a first-term governor of no distinction except a dearth of enemies and convictions...

...Then there are the more important ironies: Of a political party about to nominate a candidate approved by just 15 per cent of its members, adamantly opposed by 36 per cent, preferred to his Democratic opponent by little over half...

...One hundred prospective Goldwater delegates come from states in the South which elect virtually no Republicans to anything...

...Since Goldwater is strongest in many of the states where the Party is weakest, the platform committee is constitutionally favorable to his point of view...

...and John Crafcc (R...

...Most of these delegates obviously do not support Goldwater because they think he will help the party in their states...

...It did not support its one announced and qualified candidate, Nelson Rockefeller...

...Progressive Republican Governors Romney (Mich...

...So Goldwater will be nominated, in spite of the fact that he could have been stopped by concerted opposition at any point during the last year...

...but Goldwater would galvanize the maximum Democratic vote in the industrial, unionized North and West Coast...

...The effects of the Goldwater candidacy on the Republican party and on the two-party system, however, are likely to be pernicious...

...In short, progressive Republicans face a crisis in their relations with their party unprecedented since the days of Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moosers...

...This year he has frequently asserted that the platform committee is "the authentic voice of the convention" and should have the last word on the contents of the platform without outside intervention...

...George F. Gilder, formerly editor of the now defunct Advance, a liberal Republican journal, is currently writing a book about GOP politics...

...The fact that the Pennsylvania Governor will come close and might conceivably win—despite his lateness, his lack of Presidential qualifications, and his less than commanding personality—is evidence of Goldwater's fundamental weakness, which is symbiotic with his fundamental strength...

...of course, preposterous that such a man should be nominated...

...Nothing has happened to make his nomination anything less than nonsense...

...The statistics on marginal or "swing" congressional districts (held by less than 55 per cent of the vote) also portend catastrophe for the Party, particularly in areas presently controlled by progressive Republicans...

...The other Right-wingers will handle the other issues, most importantly foreign policy...

...But this is the year of the victory of Cassius Clay, whom Goldwater in his different calling somewhat resembles, whom nobody took seriously either, and for whom the opposition also ponderously and incredibly collapsed...

...Even if he should do well in the Electoral College, his defeat in the populous area...

...Of a candidate for President with no ostensible qualifications of competence, experience or national support, no formal education beyond freshman year of college, and political positions that must be changed radically to make him acceptable even to some of his closest supporters...

...it is designed to overthrow that balance...

...Conscience of a Conservative—a useful reductio ad absurdum of what now passes for American conservatism...

...But lest the liberal ambience of San Francisco induce any untoward moderation, Laird has enlisted the services of the American Enterprise Institute for help with the drafting...

...There are four times as many marginal districts in states which the Draft Goldwater Committee wrote off, as there are in the states it claimed for the Senator in a projected Presidential campaign...

...And this Republican attempt to exploit the race issue is certain to roil emotions at a time of crisis in U.S...

...On civil rights, if a politically decisive white revolt occurs, Johnson would be likely to take to the air and sanctimoniously denounce extremism in civil rights demonstrations...

...He would be the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate...

...Of the stop-Goldwater movement which seems to have stopped everyone but Goldwater...

...But it was this very book that attracted the fervent support of the nation's fringe conservatives and gave Goldwater his initial impetus as a national figure...

...it appeased its militant minority until that minority was dictating terms of surrender...

...George Murphy, running for the Senate against Pierre Salinger in California, is an example...

...This organization, a Right-wing omnibus, which includes much of the Goldwater research and speechwriting staff among its leadership, along with assorted Birchers and segregationists, is in effect a Goldwater organ...

...Goldwater's good luck has been so phenomenal, in fact, as to suggest the hand of Providence...

...it is felt, the far-Right can be finally repressed, and Lyndon Johnson will be emancipated to enact a broad liberal program...

...As Vice Chairman, Laird was enraged by the Rockefeller-Nixon last minute intervention to liberalize the committee draft...

...They support him to aid them in an attempt to take over the party for the Rightwing...

...There is likely to be one progressive Republican, however, who would go much further than that in supporting Goldwater...

...race relations...

...Any Republican Presidential candidate can—and they all regularly do—bring out the full Republican vote in the sparsely populated states of the West where the Right-wing is strongest...

...By destroying Goldwater...

...The Georgia Republican party, long a moderate force in the state, has been captured and purged by the Right-wing in spite of the fact that Atlanta was one of the few big cities in the country where Nixon won the Negro vote in 1960...

...And even these catastrophes might not be enough to elect Barry Goldwater...

...The chairman of the committee is Representative Melvin Laird (Wis...

...The Southern group will concentrate its influence on the civil rights plank, as it has in the past...

...This view may be valid in some respects...

...At that time he would likely be opposed both by Goldwater or a Right-wing replacement, and by a candidate who had not implicated himself so deeply in the Goldwater debacle—perhaps John Lindsay, Charles Percy, or Mark Hatfield...

...Lodge's candidacy billowed impressively until the Oregon primary, when it succumbed to Rockefeller's indefatigable campaigning...

...Republican support for Johnson stands at over 40 per cent with Goldwater as the candidate...

...I.) would probably be defeated...

...Republican moderates who do not have the misfortune to be running for office this year will be left to savor the irony of it all: Of Rockefeller, who entered politics six years ago to save his party from the likes of Eisenhower and Nixon, now appealing to them to save it from Goldwater...

...Even the President's death would be unlikely to bring Democratic defeat—if the party nominates an acceptable Vice-Presidential candidate...

...Goldwater's weakness is with the Republican party of the past decade, now desperately mobilizing to save itself...

...The Goldwater candidacy, even in defeat, may well succeed in its other objectives: The defeat or isolation of progressive incumbents, the election of new Right-wingers, the adoption of a generally Right-wing platform, the development of a far-Right, allwhite Republican party in the South, and the propagation of Right-wing views in a national campaign...

...Y.) and Hugh Scott (Pa...

...Of George Romney, before California, assuring the State by telegram that he would have no part of a stop-Goldwater movement...

...Unless Goldwater himself intervenes forcefully for a moderate platform— hardly a likely eventuality—this document will probably be the most conservative since World War II...

...There is virtually no doubt, then, that Goldwater's candidacy will importantly reduce Republican strength in the House and Senate, and that most of the reductions will be in the progressive contingent...

...A foreign reverse would be more difficult to handle, but Johnson could call for national unity, and in any case it is hard to imagine the people turning to Goldwater in an international crisis...

...of the North would be so overwhelming that he would lose the popular vote by a vast margin...

...But some other progressive, perhaps Governor Scranton, might...

...In addition, the Republicans control one or both legislative houses and hold a total of 1,010 legislative seats in six of the writtenoff states...

...They would then engross themselves in the problems of their own campaigns...

...This trend toward bigotry and extremism in the Southem GOP is not only morally corrupt but politically inopportune...

...Governor Scranton and Richard Nixon, both ready to move after Oregon, found Rockefeller moving too fast to keep up with and postponed their drive until after California...

...Those who are up for election would have to distinguish themselves from the national candidate by asserting their opposition to Goldwater's policies...

...In 1960, a move to name Laird chairman of the committee was rejected by Richard Nixon on the grounds that he was too conservative...

...Then, too, the Southern delegations, largely purged of moderate influences, will be more aggressive and better organized than ever before, as will the rest of the conservative contingent...

...The Goldwater candidacy would be equally damaging to progressive Republicans in senatorial and gubernatorial races...

...There may be a disaster in Southeast Asia or elsewhere...

...Thus New York, the second most Republican state in the country, behind Kansas, and the second most populous, behind California, is just half as strong on the committee as Mississippi and Alabama together, which have yet to elect a Republican to significant state office...

...One of Goldwater's gravest liabilities in running against President Johnson would be his book...

...If the progressives have learned the lesson of 1964, they would not again allow complacency and irresolution to prevent them from asserting their full strength...

...Of Scranton and General Eisenhower on the telephone, yo-yoing the Scranton candidacy for six months—rivalling Ev and Charlie as the top Republican comedy team...

...Most of these men are not planning to repudiate the national ticket...

...Responsible Republicans should make sure that the nation is not exposed to that possibility again in 1968...

...The fact that they will probably fail even in this suggests the extent of their plight...

...For instance, on the first ballot Goldwater may receive nine votes from New Jersey, two from New York, five from Massachusetts, four from the District of Columbia, and perhaps 45 from Illinois...

...His nomination, however, would extend the catastrophe, somewhat diffused, to the country...

...Democratic incumbents would receive often crucial help from Goldwater in 10 states...

...The lesson would seem to be that when labor is frontally assaulted, as it would be with Goldwater on the ballot, labor gets out the vote, and not for Republicans...

...Its influence, reportedly great, will be entirely toward the Right...

...In the South, the Goldwater candidacy is an unmitigated disaster...

...his strength is with a new Republican party struggling to be born, based in the South and West, and willing to see the rest of the party die for his candidacy...

...Johnson may be strengthened enough to get a Medicare bill, and expand his poverty program...

...Goldwater's weakness among the voters was regularly confirmed in polls and primaries...

...The piatform committee this year promises to be more intractably conservative than ever before...

...Those who are not up for election this year may be able to temporize for the duration...

...His followers have already driven Negroes out of official party positions all over the region...

...Yet the Right-wing attempt to elect new Right-wingers is much less promising than their prospective purge of incumbent progressives...

...Rout for the Americans in Southeast Asia, race conflict in the United States, death or incapacitation of the American president—this is the nightmarish stuff that Right-wing dreams are made of...

...In the Senate, the Republican seats held by moderates J. Glenn Beali (Md...

...Contrary to the hopes of the National Review, neither Eisenhower would accept the nomination...

...By the time Goldwater won there, it was too late to do anything...

...William Scranton's candidacy is too late, and he is too little...

...Goldwater's candidacy does not reflect the existing balance of power in the party...