The American Spectator

Streetcar Line

Listen to Goldwater

By Quin Hillyer on 8.1.07 @ 12:08AM

At the 1960 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Barry Goldwater famously told conservatives to "grow up." It's time we hear that message again.

As in 1960, the conservative movement seems grumbling, disaffected, even downright angry -- and, most importantly, it sometimes seems more interested in complaining and moaning than in uniting, constructively, to achieve political success.

What's worse is that we seem to be fighting among ourselves. Every chance we get, we take shots at other conservatives. Nobody, it seems, is good enough. We moan that nobody is another Reagan. Nobody is another Churchill. Nobody is another Washington.

To which we ought to say, so what? There's only one Second Coming, and He isn't running for anything.

It's time we look at the good things we've got -- and the good people, and the good times. Take stock of those goods, and celebrate them, and consolidate them in an attractive way, and build, build, build upon them.

Before going further with this argument, let's try a little exercise. Let's consider the major Republican presidential candidates, and recognize just how solid they are by saying something good about each of them:

Fred Thompson has built a career as a reformer with a solidly mainstream-conservative record. He did the legal work that helped imprison Ray Blanton, a corrupt, Democratic governor of Tennessee. And Thompson is a very good communicator.

Rudy Giuliani was quite arguably the best big-city mayor in the history of mankind. And his record in New York was conservative on just about every count.

Mitt Romney is a superb businessman; he rescued the Winter Olympics in Utah; and he figured out how to get elected statewide as a Republican in Massachusetts and, once there, governed more conservatively than he campaigned.

John McCain is an American hero. And he has the political courage to stick to his guns in foul weather. He's terrific in support of the military, and against wasteful spending.

Not to belabor the point, but the same could be said for some of the lesser-known GOP presidential contenders. For instance, Duncan Hunter has spent 25 years as a wise, stalwart and effective supporter of our military, and he is a kind and palpably decent human being who sticks with friends through thick and thin.

And Tommy Thompson, in his three-plus terms as Wisconsin's chief executive, easily proved he ranks with Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, Florida's Jeb Bush, and Alabama's Bob Riley as the best governors of the past half-century.

And so on.

Okay, this game is fun. How about noting that the two Republican congressional leaders have some serious bona fides as well?

Mitch McConnell is running rings around Harry Reid in the Senate, and John Boehner was an essential and crafty leader of the back-bench movement that culminated in the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, John McCain, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Boehner, Hillary Clinton, Business, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Supreme Court, Military