Quin Hillyer: Meet the New Barry Goldwater
[Quin Hillyer is an associate editor at the Washington Examiner and a senior editor of The American Spectator.]
Many conservatives realistic enough to know there will never be "another Reagan" nevertheless wish at least for another Barry Goldwater. They don't realize that we already have one. His name is John McCain.
Granted, McCain is more like the Goldwater of 1981 than like the conservative standard bearer of 1964. At age 72, Goldwater was, like the 72-year-old McCain today, a former conservative firebrand who long since had become a source of frustration for many conservatives. He actually started frustrating them during his presidential campaign 17 years earlier when he summarily replaced the mastermind who won him the nomination, Clif White, with an entirely different campaign team for the fall -- and then proceeded to run a campaign as if he didn't really care about winning, but just about spouting off. He also never repaid Ronald Reagan's great support for his campaign with anything even approaching loyalty in return, going so far as to support Gerald Ford against Reagan for the Republican nomination in 1976 and again withholding his support for Reagan in the primaries in 1980. In fact, he also had lost touch with his own constituents. Goldwater survived his own Senate re-election campaign in 1980 by the skin of his teeth, pulled across the finish line almost despite himself by the strength of the Reagan landslide at the top of the ticket along with a determined effort on his behalf by pro-life voters.
At least Goldwater was still pro-life in 1981. And he never gave up his small-government predilections, nor his support for a strong defense and for meeting the needs of individual servicemen. Irascible, iconoclastic, sometimes a bit profane, always his own man and nobody else's, the Goldwater of 1981 was a curmudgeon's curmudgeon -- but he still had a lot to offer his country, working ceaselessly with Sen. Don Nickles during Goldwater's final term to re-organize the military command structure in a way that succeeded tremendously well when first put to a real test during the Gulf War of 1991....
Read entire article at American Spectator
Many conservatives realistic enough to know there will never be "another Reagan" nevertheless wish at least for another Barry Goldwater. They don't realize that we already have one. His name is John McCain.
Granted, McCain is more like the Goldwater of 1981 than like the conservative standard bearer of 1964. At age 72, Goldwater was, like the 72-year-old McCain today, a former conservative firebrand who long since had become a source of frustration for many conservatives. He actually started frustrating them during his presidential campaign 17 years earlier when he summarily replaced the mastermind who won him the nomination, Clif White, with an entirely different campaign team for the fall -- and then proceeded to run a campaign as if he didn't really care about winning, but just about spouting off. He also never repaid Ronald Reagan's great support for his campaign with anything even approaching loyalty in return, going so far as to support Gerald Ford against Reagan for the Republican nomination in 1976 and again withholding his support for Reagan in the primaries in 1980. In fact, he also had lost touch with his own constituents. Goldwater survived his own Senate re-election campaign in 1980 by the skin of his teeth, pulled across the finish line almost despite himself by the strength of the Reagan landslide at the top of the ticket along with a determined effort on his behalf by pro-life voters.
At least Goldwater was still pro-life in 1981. And he never gave up his small-government predilections, nor his support for a strong defense and for meeting the needs of individual servicemen. Irascible, iconoclastic, sometimes a bit profane, always his own man and nobody else's, the Goldwater of 1981 was a curmudgeon's curmudgeon -- but he still had a lot to offer his country, working ceaselessly with Sen. Don Nickles during Goldwater's final term to re-organize the military command structure in a way that succeeded tremendously well when first put to a real test during the Gulf War of 1991....