Barry Goldwater

 Hey all.  A while back, on a day in St. Louis when I found Tim Geithner's bailout atrocity to be particularly offensive, I tweeted at Karl Rove that I was a Hopemonger on the fence, and asked him What is the one Republican text he would recommend to shift me Right?  He recommended Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative & the early Reagan radio tapes.  If anyone in the Washington, D.C. area has a copy of either I could borrow, or that they are looking to get rid of cheap, please let me know.  I intend to review Goldwater's book, and would love to give The Gipper a listen.

Cheers.

Greetings from the Great City of Austin in the Great State of Texas in the Good Old U S of A on this, our Independence Day.  Just spent three hours under the 105 degree Texas sun (in addition to walking back and forth to the capital...about 2 miles in each direction).  Before I collapse from Heat Stroke, let me share a few observations:

Attendance: Roughly 3000.  Substantially lower than the April tea party @ the Capitol.  Then again, at the April party the temperature was 75.

Crowd: Mostly folks in their 50's and 60's.  Some families with children.  All in all, an older crowd than April.  About 30% Ron Paul types, 50% more traditional GOPer, 20% assorted other.

Signs: Generally quite clever.  Personal favorites: any of the several that referred to Waxman/Markey as "Crap and Trade."

Sleeper GOP Gubernatorial Candidate: Debra Medina.  I might be biased because I met her today (also briefly met Sen. Cornyn and Gov. Perry) AND got to talk to her a bit.  She's a down the line, SERIOUS, conservative.  Like the message, concerned about viability.  I told her I intend to re-elect the incumbent, but that if she could prove herself a viable candidate in BOTH the primary AND general, I'd consider giving her my vote.

Most Embarrassing Moment for a Speaker: Sen. John Cornyn being greeted by a loud chorus of Boos as he took the stage due to his vote on TARP.

Most Embarrassing Moment for the Ron Paul supporters: Continuing to Boo Senator Cornyn after he acknowledged their concerns and moved on to Porkulus/Crap and Trade/Obamacare where he's firmly on our side.

Best Speaker, Runner Up: Wanye Allyn Root.  The 2008 LIbertarian Party Vice Presidential Nominee gave the crowd an inspiring speech on the value of limited government with a whole lotta quotes from Goldwater and Reagan thrown in.  Gets brownie points in my book for his rousing (by libertarian standards) defense of President Bush's overspending and bailouts being several orders of magnitude less bad than President Obama's overspending and bailouts.

Best Speaker, Overall: Governor Perry.  No one else even came close.  Whatever his alleged flaws, Governor Perry has done A TON over this past decade to have left us the strongest economy in the country right now.

In many ways, the attitude of people in Texas towards Governor Perry right now reminds me of the attitude in NYC of people towards Rudy in July 2001.  The man's gotten so much right that his citizens now take these things for granted.

All in all, an Afternoon well spent!

I hope this helps.

That is all.

Cahnman out.

Not to undermine the administrators since apparently my log-in had been blocked, but for any members of this organization which claims to be a conservative site and which is in some areas would like to email me with any questions on Barry Goldwater or John McCain (since I lived in Arizona over 45 years, and campaigned for Senator Goldwater, and graduated one year ahead of Cindy McCain from the same grammar and high school), please let me know.

I am an expert on both "Republicans" and also was a member of the Republican Party for many years, until the first Bush, and also have much local information about both candidates that is a little more enlightening than what you will find in the media.

My blog is also available for any interested Constitutionalists, at www.backupamerica.org.

Good luck to you on your mission of the "Next Right," but I do think the Republican and Democratic labels are long, long dead.  And Goldwater and McCain are as different as night and day, and after Keating, Senator Goldwater did not have much good to say about Senator McCain - and that "general" information can be found online.

Oh, and there are many, many homeless veterans in Arizona now due to the support Senator McCain has for the illegals along with Ms. Napolitano, who was also my Governor for six, , and for which blame can be laid directly on his misrepresentation of Arizonans on this issue for years - so much so that Phoenix now has the distinction as the "Kidnapping Capitol of the World."

If any are interested in either the blog, or any further information on the fractured party, Arizona is fundamental in what has occurred there, since Senator McCain really was not an Arizonan, but a politician who simply moved to Arizona after his marriage to an Arizona native.

Again, good luck on trying to change this beleagured party, but there is not a shred of true "Republicanism" left in it at this point, and has not been for quite some time.

Nicholas Kristof attacked the subject of differentiating liberals from conservatives. Any such attempt is bound to have some limitations considering that there are a wide variety of people falling under both labels, and to some degree the labels are fluid over the years. For example, Barry Goldwater spent most of his career as a conservative leader, considered himself a liberal in his later years and, while he wouldn’t fit in perfectly with either group, would be radically at odds with today’s  conservative movement.

For whatever it is worth, I’ll throw out Kristof’s way to tell if someone is liberal or conservative:

If you want to tell whether someone is conservative or liberal, what are a couple of completely nonpolitical questions that will give a good clue?

How’s this: Would you be willing to slap your father in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit?

And, second: Does it disgust you to touch the faucet in a public restroom?

Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.

Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.

The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses…

One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.

This fits in well with George Lakoff’s strict father view of conservatives. This mindset based upon upholding authority explains why so many go ballistic in response to criticism of government activities and see liberal dissent as subversive and unpatriotic, along with their tendency to compromise civil liberties to support authority.

The below is bumped from an earlier discussion thread.  Many conservatives have trouble understanding the depth of the majority of the African American community's alienation from conservatism as a political movement.  Conservatives wonder how some African American voters can have many opinions on the right but vote for candidates on the left when they are faced with a conservative Republican vs. a liberal Democrat.  The answer has much to do with history and how that history is remembered.  The public coming out party for modern conservatism that was the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign and how the Goldwater campaign appeared  to the African American community might be a good place to begin

The conservative case that Goldwaterites opposed the great civil rights acts for benign reasons butts up against two big obstacles in convincing the African American community.

1. Why should African Americans care about the professed principles of people who would have preserved a system that made a mockery of every maxim that was spoken of in Fourth of July celebrations ("no taxation without representation", "one man one vote", "give me liberty or give me death") as it applied to southern blacks?

2. Many people who voted for southern white segragationists for the worst reasons suddenly started voting Republican in presidential reasons around the time the GOP nominated a Senator who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You can argue that it was because the Jim Crow system was no loger tenable and that the interparty competition for southern whites switched to issues like national defense, crime, taxes, abortion, whatever. There is a lot of truth to that argument, but African Americans can clearly see white southerners moving from the Democratic party to the faction of the Republican Party that was most opposed to the key civil rights law.

So if it seems like many black people assume that conservative Republicans are their natural enemies, they have their reasons.

That is not the whole story of course since one can hardly explain the conservative side's unpopularity with African Americans based totally on an almost fifty year old campaign.  The Goldwater campaign and related events did much damage to political conservatism's name among African Americans, but much has also happened to keep the antipathy alive these many years later. 

I'll have some more ideas a little later.

[Promoted - Michael Johns - former White House speechwriter and Heritage policy analyst - has a powerful memorialization of William F. Buckley. - Jon Henke]

By Michael Johns

It can be said that modern conservatism knows only two times. There was the time before him and there was the time after him, and those two times could not be more contrasting. In this stark contrast lies his larger-than-life legacy, and let there be no mistake: It is a legacy that will endure the ages.

As word of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s passing reached his many students, admirers and colleagues last February, it seemed each had an account (some grand, some small) of how this intellectual giant memorably impacted and touched their lives, their vision, and their work. In the aggregate, they tell the story of a man whose immense collective qualities--genius, boldness, industriousness, persuasiveness, and (perhaps least appreciated) kindness and generosity--were without equal in modern American public life. Even in death, Buckley is bringing conservatives together more effectually than many conservative leaders are doing in life. It should surprise no one. To have had the good fortune to have brushed upon Buckley during this life was to leave impressed, inspired, and reinvigorated in the purpose-driven life that he lived admirably and which he cultivated in a whole generation of conservatives who, now in his absence, carry forward his torch.

It may be said too often of the recently deceased, but it must be said emphatically of Buckley: We will not likely see his type again.