Republicans: The New Thrust, Barry Goldwater

If it was not a new Republican Party that emerged from San Francisco’s Cow Palace last week, it was at least a much different one. It spoke with the accents of small-town America. Its muscle came no longer from the moneyed influential East, but from the South and the West with their oil and aerospace industries. And, remarkably, although the party is predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, it chose as its candidates Barry Morris Goldwater, 55, who is half-Jewish, and William E. Miller, 50, who is a Roman Catholic.

Deep Disquiet. Goldwater won the presidential nomination by arduously cultivating support at the precinct and county levels. By the time the convention got started last week, his hard work had already paid off, and he had more than enough delegates to assure him of a first-ballot nomination.

What helped clinch it for Goldwater was the fact that a strong conservative tide was running in the U.S., fed by a deep disquiet at the grass roots over the role of an ever-expanding Government. Goldwater and the tide came to gether, and the one could not have succeeded without the other. Between them, they submerged the moderate wing of the G.O.P.

In Goldwater, the Republican Party’s conservatives have the choice that they have been demanding for a generation. With Lyndon Johnson straddling the middle road, Barry was in fact about the only leading Republican capable of offering such a choice. And his acceptance speech, vintage Goldwater in its demand for domestic conservatism and a firm foreign policy, indicated that this year the choice would be quite clear-cut.

Goldwater called for fiscal responsibility to maintain a suitable climate for a free economy. He called for individual freedom to help insure the fulfillment of the “whole man.” He attacked the Democrats for using too much governmental power at home and too little abroad in the struggle with Communism. The goal of the U.S., he said, was “to flourish as the land of the free, not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of Communism.” In a phrase reminiscent of Wendell Willkie’s acceptance speech in 1940, he cried: “Only the strong can remain free; only the strong can keep the peace.”-

Switchblade Issue. Goldwater also turned to a couple of issues that had preoccupied the convention throughout the week. One was the so-called “switchblade issue,” first introduced at the convention when Dwight Eisenhower voiced his concern over crime in the cities. It was an issue that obviously touched nerve ends among the delegates. It makes sense as a national issue only if considered in conjunction with the “white backlash.” Goldwater seized on it, warning of “the growing menace” to life and property in America’s big cities and demanding governmental action.

The second issue was extremism. It had produced the major conflict of the convention when the G.O.P. moderates sought to insert an anti-extremism plank in the party platform. Goldwater’s delegates shouted them down, and Barry threw the issue back in the moderates’ faces. “I like those lines,” he said, and he ordered them underlined in his printed text. “I would remind you,” the lines went, “that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

In the abstract, the lines are unimpeachable; in the context that Goldwater used them, they were questionable. They drew tumultuous cheers from the delegates; they also got Barry embroiled in a thunderous dispute. New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller blasted Barry’s remarks as “dangerous, irresponsible and frightening.” Barry shot back: “Extremism is no sin if you are engaged in the defense of freedom.” California’s Democratic Governor Pat Brown said the remarks had “the stench of Fascism.” Retorted Barry: “It’s the stench of Brown—it’s ignorance.” Dwight Eisenhower too was disturbed, declared that the remarks “would seem to say that the end always justifies the means.” Added Ike: “The whole American system refutes that idea and that concept.”

Uphill Fight. Throughout, Barry refused to back down. He felt the remarks had been misconstrued, but even more, he was simply not going to stand still for criticism from the moderates.

He had heavily emphasized that fact in his acceptance speech. “Anyone who joins us in all sincerity we welcome,” said he. “Those who do not care for our cause we don’t expect to enter our ranks.”

Even if the moderate wing of his party were wholeheartedly behind him, Goldwater would face an uphill battle against Lyndon Johnson—and the moderates are clearly unenthusiastic. On the face of it, his chances would seem to be nil. But in 1960 the G.O.P. lost the presidency by one of the narrowest margins in history, and the party made gains in Congress in 1962. Within hours after the convention’s end, it was already a cliche to say that Goldwater might come much closer than most people might suspect. But whatever the totals, it seemed certain to be a rough, tough fight.

*Said Willkie, speaking at Elwood, Ind.: “It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free.”