A Penny for the Old Guy
Jesse Walker | November 9, 2007, 10:05am
Daniel McCarthy on Barry Goldwater's
contested legacy:
[T]he sharpest division that split the Goldwater movement of the '60s...wasn't the division between libertarians and traditionalists, it was the division that separated idealistic libertarians and traditionalists alike, the campaign amateurs, from the campaign professionals. The conservative movement still pays lip service to economic liberty, social order, and military strength -- but on all three points, Republicans have become hollow men who have preserved the rites of Goldwaterism but who long ago lost its spirit. That was an amateur spirit -- in both the best and worst senses of the word -- and it drew together in common cause traditionalists and libertarians as different as Brent Bozell and Goldwater speechwriter Karl Hess....
Today, nation-building and empire, together with K Street politics, is about all that animates the Republicans who claim to be following in Goldwater's footsteps. They've lost what the 1960 and 1964 Goldwater movements were really all about, and they won't rediscover what they've lost by furrowing their brows wondering if Goldwaterism was really purely libertarian or fusionist. Goldwater himself was a man of the American West, and his legacy can be claimed by either libertarians or traditionalists -- if they can put the principled spirit of the old movement before the emoluments of politics.
These days the amateurs are holding Guy Fawkes
fundraisers for Ron Paul, and the hollow men are
sneering at their efforts. This is the way the week sounds: First came a bang, then the whimpers.
Bonus links: More McCarthy on Goldwater
here.
Reason on Goldwater
here.
joe | November 9, 2007, 11:11am | #
Now, how about instead of talking about me, we get back to Goldwater and the relationship between careerist insiders and movement amateurs in the party?
Among the Republicans, the closest thing to the free-agent, movement-oriented amateurs in the past 20 years would seem to be the Religious Right.
And yesterday, we see that Pat Robertson endorsed a pro-choice supporter of gay rights.
The conservative netroots has always been of a piece with the rest of the party apparatus. They self-consciously view themselves as soldiers for the cause, as laid down by the party, in a way that the Gate-Crashers never have. To a certain extent, this reflects the way the liberal blogosphere was bottom up, with people setting up their own blogs to push their own ideas, while the conservative blogosphere has been largely top down, with the major sites set up by longtime party activists or established media organs.
It's the difference between the Daily Kos and National Review's "The Corner." Between Atrios and Pajamas Media.
But on another level, this reflects the ideological effects of the Iraq War and of Karl Rove's strategy of using terror, security, and war as wedge issues. Conservative activists view the promotion of Republicans' political interests over Democrats' as part and parcel of the War on Terror, and have never been shy about saying so. As opinion on Iraq, torture, and other WoT issues has changed, and as Bush's popularity has plummeted this has started to change.
Thus far, we haven't seen much in the way of the indie liberal bloggers being coopted. Perhaps, once the Iraq War and the Bush presidency end, eliminatig the major insider/outsider split (the fight over how to respond to Bush's Iraq policy), we'll see liberal bloggers operating as party organs, too.
