Nation: Barry’s Big Issue

Candidate Goldwater plainly has decided that the essence of Johnsonism is socialism, and he is making that the big, belated issue of his campaign. Last week he repeated the theme time and again.

“The issues,” said he in Ardmore, Pa., “are an all-powerful central government versus the federal system that we have lived under and prospered under; it is a socialized economy v. a free economy that we have prospered under and lived under. It is these two things that the American people are deciding when they go to the polls this coming November.”

Speaking in Washington to a United Press International convention, Barry kept it up. “Some people,” he said, “just assume that some sort of socialism, or whatever name they give it, is inevitable, that most Americans really favor it, and that the only real political issues are choices between how far or how fast. I take violent exception to that. The great domestic issue of this entire campaign is whether we will take a path that leads to socialism, or whether we will get back on a road of individual freedom, individual responsibility, and individual initiative.”

He paused, and asked rhetorically: “Are we going to leave room for any sort of individualism in this country, or are we going to sacrifice it all to the demands and the supposed benefits of Government control?”

In New Jersey, Goldwater demanded that Democrats “stop pussyfooting,” and label their program socialism. And in Lubbock, Texas, he went all out after Johnson. “When,” demanded Barry, “will he candidly admit that our course is toward socialism, or, if he rejects socialism, will he tell how he will oppose it and its spokesmen? Oh, how I wish the parties could fight this out. I refuse to dignify the party by associating the name ‘Democratic’ with it, but I wish they would accent the term ‘Socialist Party,’ because, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, this is the road they are on.”

Still speaking of Lyndon, Goldwater concluded: “Of course, when he gets back here to Texas and has those high-heeled boots on, and that ten-gallon hat, and he calls you ‘Pardner,’ he sounds like a conservative banker. But I can tell you in Washington when he wears just plain old shoes and says, ‘How do you do,’ he speaks an entirely different language, that of the radical liberals. And whether he likes it or not, or even knows it, he is backing socialism.”