Barack Obama has recently gained the support of conservative
defectors, including several of the late Barry Goldwater’s kin.
C.C. Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee’s outspoken
granddaughter, said the “Republican brand has been tarnished.”
This begs the question: Which candidate would
Barry Goldwater really have supported? Rather than take
anyone else’s word on this, I dusted off and re-read my
copy of Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. With
all due respect, C.C. Goldwater and the Obamacons should do the
same.
Barry Goldwater might have — no, surely would have
— criticized many of the policies of George W. Bush and
John McCain. However, Goldwater would have objected that neither
has remained true enough to conservative ideology. President Bush
has overspent federal tax dollars and presided
over a breathless expansion of government. McCain has
advocated proposals like a $300 billion federal-mortgage-purchase
plan and sponsored campaign finance reforms that limit free
speech by curtailing campaign contributions.
Nonetheless, there is little question that Goldwater would have
shuddered at Obama’s agenda and likely preferred the man who
succeeded him in the Senate. Do not take it from me; take it from
Goldwater’s own words.
Barry Goldwater, recognizing the disingenuousness and opportunism
of politicians like Obama, wrote, “Where is the politician who
has not promised his constituents a fight to the death for lower
taxes.” Goldwater opposed the growth of the welfare system and
the tendency to tax success, calling the graduated income
tax “a confiscatory tax.” When he denounced the aim of
the progressive tax “to bring down all men to a common
level,” he was opposing the premise behind Obama’s promise
“to spread the wealth around.”
Goldwater was an ardent advocate of states’ rights and
acknowledged even in his time that neither Democrats nor
Republicans truly were committed to that principle. While C.C.
Goldwater recently wrote that her grandfather “would
never suggest denying a woman’s right to choose,” I would argue
that that the pro-choice Barry Goldwater was far more principled
than to read his personal views into the Constitution. The
Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade was a federal
intrusion into issues properly left to the 50 states. Goldwater
often saw the expansion of federal power as a contraction of
freedom.
Mr. Conservative also supported a “prompt and final termination
of the farm subsidy program” and opposed “the enormous economic
and political power now concentrated in the hands of union
leaders.” Meanwhile, Obama supports farm subsidies and endorses
the highly problematic ethanol program. His central labor
proposal is to deny workers secret ballots in
union-representation elections, thereby increasing Big Labor’s
power and possibly their use
of coercive organizing tactics.
Goldwater opposed free federal health care, arguing, “I am
unaware of any moral virtue that is attached to my decision to
confiscate the earnings of X and give them to Y.” He was not
opposed to the notion of helping the less fortunate. To the
contrary, he strongly advocated generosity and charity at the
private level. He opposed the bureaucracy and wastefulness of
federal education, favoring instead more accountability, not more
money.
However, more than anything else, Goldwater would have supported
John McCain over Obama because of the key foreign-policy
differences that separate this year’s nominees. Goldwater
realized that “American freedom has always depended, to an
extent, on what is happening beyond our shores.” During the Cold
War, he recognized that because the Soviet Union’s goal was
hegemony, we were at war with the Kremlin. He was disenchanted
that U.S. leaders “[had] not made victory the goal of American
policy.”
“Victory” is a word rarely uttered by Obama, who seems far more
interested in restoring America’s reputation in Western Europe
and the Middle East than in winning the War on Terror, along
with the War in Iraq. Goldwater felt that war was a
necessary evil at times, and he even opposed certain negotiations
with the Soviets, arguing that “there is harm in talking under
the present conditions.” I wonder what he would have thought
about Obama’s proposal to sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. Goldwater was skeptical of the United Nations, and
he said, “Peace has never been achieved, and it will not in our
time, by rival nations suddenly deciding to turn their swords
into plowshares.” He would have realized that Western society is
engaged in a war, both real and ideological, with Islamofascists,
and it is a war in which victory is the only good option.
John McCain is no Barry Goldwater, but there is little doubt that
Goldwater would have embraced him over Barack Obama. Goldwater
once said that “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no
virtue.” To those Republicans suddenly jumping ship, he might
have said that fecklessness in the face of danger is no virtue,
either.
