From Goldwater To Reagan
BAUER, GARY
From Goldwater To Reagan By Gary Bauer Iwas a senior in high school when Barry Goldwater ran for president. I was active in his campaign in my hometown, Newport, Ky., a bluecollar community...
...And I’m gonna work for him in the White House...
...Goldwater wasn’t an easy sell in Newport...
...They sought to silence by name-calling what they could not oppose by reasoned argument...
...He trumpeted faith, family, and freedom...
...There was, and is, no substitute for victory...
...America suffered a long, dark night of the soul...
...Yet there was something obviously missing in Goldwater’s appeal...
...He understood that we could not simply co-exist with the Soviet Union...
...They would wait for the man who could put it all together—Ronald Reagan...
...Evangelicals and Catholics, two large communities that had been historically Democratic, responded to Reagan’s call...
...The backers of LBJ were willing to use any means—fair or foul—not only to beat Barry Goldwater, but to destroy him...
...But what I remember most vividly about 1964 is the intolerance of the activists on the left...
...The Vietnam war soon broke his presidency...
...Liberals charged that the GOP candidate was not simply mistaken but probably insane...
...Reagan spoke eloquently and unapologetically of traditional moral values...
...Reagan followed Barry in honoring our military and beefing up our defenses...
...His management of the economy set off an inflationary spiral that lasted for over a decade...
...For millions of these Americans, he was not only the first Republican in a generation to win their votes, he was also the first since Ike to win their love...
...In order to win that campaign, liberals told the American people that their opponents were not simply wrong, but actually wanted to take the country into nuclear war...
...He was brave—and that is the first of all the virtues...
...My father, a wounded World War II vet, defended my right to campaign for Barry, but he didn’t share my enthusiasm...
...And they largely succeeded— at least in 1964...
...Reagan, like Barry, knew that government had grown too big and spent too much...
...I pointed to the screen and told my father, “That man is going to be president...
...But he was not crushed...
...ple fascists are usually embittered ideologues who fear any real expression of the popular beliefs of everyday Americans...
...I learned then that people who call other peoGary Bauer is president of the Family Research Council...
...Goldwater’s astringent libertarianism never rang true to millions of everyday Americans...
...Lyndon Johnson died a broken man, reviled by the very youths who had called us fascists...
...Against Johnson’s “credibility gap,” there was Goldwater’s manly candor...
...But Reagan also went beyond Goldwater, for Reagan wanted not simply to shrink government, but to free Americans’ native genius...
...Barry Goldwater eloquently made the case for limited government...
...Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty quickly degenerated into a racial spoils system, an unlovely political pork barrel...
...Barry supported him from his perch in the Senate...
...I was active in his campaign in my hometown, Newport, Ky., a bluecollar community with a strong union presence...
...These were the successful answers to the liberals’ vaunted compassion...
...As high-school kids, we were called fascists...
...My father laughed off my prediction as “nuts...
...I remember watching Reagan’s magnificent TV speech for Goldwater two weeks before the election we all sensed would be a disaster...
...He wanted not simply to cut taxes, but to sustain the family...
...For Reagan, too, knew that the “evil empire” had to be transcended...
...Three hundred dead a week in a war we would not win and could not leave, riots on campuses, and cities in flames marked the Johnson legacy...
...It was the Reagan message—conservatism with a human face—that brought all the great partners of the conservative movement together...
...But he was proud to visit me in my West Wing office when I served as President Reagan’s domestic policy adviser...
...The protesters’ youthful resistance to LBJ still inspires the Left, but some veterans of those years call them “that slum of a decade...
...And Americans listened...
...And they sought to stigmatize us, his supporters...
...Soon, the nation realized that Barry Goldwater was a genuine man, a true son of the frontier West...
...He inspired thousands of young conservatives, who ever afterward would be proud to say they had stood with him in ’64...
...Reagan carried forward and completed the Goldwater message...
...Goldwater, of course, suffered what all the liberal commentators called “a crushing defeat...
...We should honor him, even when, as I increasingly did, we disagreed with him...
...Nor were we...
...Strong defense, smaller government, and traditional moral values proved to be a winning combination...
...we had to defeat communism...
...But Barry was first...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 39
