Barry Goldwater: insurgent conservatism as constitutive rhetoric

Abstract

Conservatives are generally held to be biased towards the present state of affairs, but some conservatives see the present state of affairs as so great a threat, they advocate its overthrow. They are insurgent conservatives. Scholars portray a Republican Party in the 1950s and 1960s dominated by a north-east liberal establishment confronting an emerging opposition based on anti-communism, economic liberalism and limited government. Barry Goldwater, deploying ideas developed as a long-standing opponent of the New Deal, from his experiences as a businessman, and his philosophic commitment to individualism, engaged extensively with conservatives from the mid- to late 1950s, becoming the spokesman for the developing conservative movement. Goldwater articulated an alternative, radical interpretation of conservatism. Using constitutive rhetoric, an under-used tool in the study of conservatism, this paper explores the content and message of Goldwater’s insurgent conservatism. Rather than focussing on persuasion, constitutive rhetoric focuses on the relationship between the speaker and the audience in the forging of an identity. Goldwater’s audience was already persuaded; what was needed was a common conservative identity to inspire a political movement. Goldwater did not ‘call conservatism into being,’ but his rhetoric fuelled an insurgency and constituted conservatism in a new configuration.

Notes

1. See, for example, S. Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater? The Inside Story of the 1964 Republican Campaign (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965); K. Hess, In A Cause That Will Triumph: The Goldwater Campaign and the Future of Conservatism (New York: Doubleday, 1967); F. Clifton White, with W.Gill, Suite 3505: The Story of the Draft Goldwater Movement (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1967); J.W. Middendorf, A Glorious Disaster. Barry Goldwater’s Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement (New York: Basic Books, 2006); and R. Perlstein, Before the Storm. Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Nation Books, 2009).

2. J.C. Hammerback, ‘Barry Goldwater’s rhetorical legacy,’ Southern Communication Journal, 64 (1999), pp. 323–232 at p. 329.

3. T. Skocpol and V. Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 41.

4. W. Crotty, ‘Ideology as a polarizing force,’ in William Crotty (Ed) Polarized Politics. The Impact of Divisiveness in the US Political System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2015), pp. 7–26 at p. 17.

5. J. Boyd-White, Heracles’ Bow. Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 38.

6. Boyd-White, ibid., p. x and p. 28.

7. B. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, first published 1960, facsimile reprint (Seattle, WA: Stellar Books, 2013), p. 3.

8. B. Goldwater, ‘Speech at Montgomery County, Maryland,’ 107 Cong. Rec., 30 August 1961, pp. 17642–17644 at p. 17642.

9. B. Goldwater, ‘The “Grow Up Conservatives” speech,’ The New York Times, 28 July 1960. http://fofweb.com/History/HisRefMain.asp (accessed 7 April 2014). See also, M.C. Brennan, ‘A step in the “Right” direction: conservative republicans and the election of 1960,’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, 22 (1992), pp. 81–83.

10. B. Goldwater, ‘Speech at Dodger Stadium, LA,’ 109 Cong. Rec., 25 September 1963, pp. 18134–18135.

11. Middendorf, A Glorious Disaster, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 30.

12. Boyd-White, Heracles’ Bow, op. cit., Ref. 5, pp. 33–34.

13. Boyd-White, ibid., p. 36.

14. The idea of the terministic screen is taken from K. Burke, Language as Symbolic Action (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966).

15. E.B. Black, ‘The second persona,’ The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 71 (1970), pp. 109–119.

16. J.C. Hammerback, ‘Barry Goldwater’s rhetoric of rugged individualism,’ Quarterly Journal of Speech, 58 (1972), pp. 175–183 at p. 181.

17. B.L. Bozell, ‘Goldwater’s leadership: an assessment,’ National Review, 9, 13 August 1960, p. 74.

18. H. Clinton, Living History (London: Headline Books, 2004), p. 21.

19. Black, ‘The second persona,’ op. cit., Ref. 15, p. 111.

20. Black, ibid., p. 113.

21. I. Haney-Lopéz, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 17–22 for Goldwater’s contribution to the genre.

22. L. Althusser, ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatuses: notes towards an investigation,’ in Louis Althusser (Ed) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. B. Brewster (London: Verso Books, 1970), pp. 85–176 at p. 126.

23. B. Goldwater, ‘The effect of tax on basic institutions’, 103 Cong. Rec., 8 April 1957, pp. 5258–5262 at p. 5260.

24. Ibid., p. 5261.

25. B. Goldwater, ‘Federal aid to education’, 104 Cong. Rec., 13 August 1958, p. 17924.

26. B. Goldwater, ‘Wanted: a more conservative GOP,’ Human Events, 17 (1960), p. 6.

27. J.W. Dean and B. Goldwater Jr, Pure Goldwater (New York: St Martins Press/Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 204 and p. 210. Emphasis added.

28. Goldwater, ‘Wanted,’ op. cit., Ref. 26, p. 6.

29. B. Goldwater, ‘Use of senate caucus room by Walter Reuther for press conference,’ 104 Cong. Rec., 26 February 1958, p. 2888. See also, E.T. Shermer, ‘Origins of the conservative ascendancy: Barry Goldwater’s early senate career and the de-legitimization of organised labour,’ Journal of American History, 95 (2008), pp. 678–709.

30. Perlstein, Before the Storm, op. cit., Ref. 1, p.46. See also, G. Donaldson, Liberalism’s Last Hurrah. The Presidential Campaign of 1964 (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), pp. 59–60.

31. Donaldson, ibid., Ref. 30, p. 25.

32. Goldwater, ‘Speech at Montgomery County,’ op. cit., Ref. 8, p. 17643.

33. B. Goldwater, ‘Speech at Notre Dame University, North Bend, Indiana’, 108 Cong. Rec., 7 February 1962, p. 2059.

34. Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater?, op.cit., Ref. 1, p. 17.

35. Goldwater, ‘Grow up conservatives,’ op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 7. See also F. Annunziata, ‘The revolt against the welfare state: Goldwater conservatism and the election of 1964,’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, 10 (1980), pp. 254–265.

36. For example, J. Bell, Mr. conservative: Barry Goldwater (New York: Macfadden, 1964).

37. ‘Who are the Goldwaterites?,’ Time, July 24, 1964, p. 18.

38. Goldwater, Conscience, op. cit., Ref. 7, p. 13.

39. Ibid., p. 7.

40. B. Goldwater, ‘Speech to graduating class at Brigham Young University,’ 107 Cong. Rev., 12 June 1961, pp. 9950–9953 at p. 9925.

41. Goldwater, ‘Speech at Notre Dame,’ op. cit., Ref. 33, p. 2059.

42. Dean and Goldwater, Pure Goldwater, op. cit., Ref. 27, p. 111. See also B. Goldwater, ‘Basic ideas of government,’ 108 Cong. Rec., 24 August 1962, pp. 17540–17542 at p. 17540.

43. B. Goldwater, ‘Speech on Indo-China,’ 99 Cong. Rec., 1 July 1953, pp. 7779–7784 at p. 7780.

44. K. Phillips-Fein, ‘Conservatism: a state of the field,’ Journal of American History, 98 (2011), pp. 723–743 or p. 726.

45. G.H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976).

46. For example, K. Schuparra, ‘Barry Goldwater and Southern California Conservatism: Ideology, Image and Myth in the 1964 California Republican Presidential Primary,’ Southern California Quarterly, 73 (1992), pp. 277–298, K. Schuparra, Rise and Triumph of the Right. The Rise of the California Conservative Movement, 1945–1966 (New York: M.E. Sharpe Amonk, 1998) and L. McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

47. For example, B.M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), K.D. Durr, Behind the Backlash. White Working Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940–1980 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007) and R.O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

48. For example, J. Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), J.E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2008) and M.D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

49. S. Alsop, ‘Can Goldwater Win in ’64?,’ in Saturday Evening Post, 24–31 August 1964, pp. 19–24 at p. 23. See also I. Crespi, ‘The structural basis for right-wing conservatism: the Goldwater case,’ The Public Opinion Quarterly, 29 (1965), pp. 523–543.

50. W.A. Rusher, ‘Cross roads for the GOP,’ National Review, 14 (1963), pp. 109–112.

51. See, R. Mann, Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds. LBJ, Barry Goldwater and the Ad That Changed American Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2011), pp. 83–102 and R.D. Johnson, All the Way with LBJ. The 1964 Presidential Election (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 199–247.

52. Hess, In A Cause, op. cit., Ref. 1, pp. 39–42.

53. Goldwater, ‘The effect of tax,’ op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 5261.

54. Goldwater, ‘Speech at Mongomery County,’ op. cit., Ref. 8, p. 17645.

55. Hess, In A Cause, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 152.

56. Hess, ibid., p. 158.

57. J.A. Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), G.L. Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism. Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: New York University Press, 1999), J.M. Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) and L.J. Gifford, The Center Cannot Hold: The 1960 Presidential Election and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (De Kalb: North Illinois Press, 2009).

58. Goldwater, ‘The effect of tax,’ op. cit., Ref. 23.

59. B. Goldwater, ‘No time for timid souls,’ 104 Cong. Rec., 8 May 1958, pp. 8354–8356.

60. Goldwater, ‘Federal aid,’ op. cit., Ref. 25.

61. B. Goldwater, ‘Air war college speech,’ 107 Cong. Rec., 11 January 1961, pp. 528–585.

62. B. Goldwater, ‘Vote against the civil rights act,’ 109 Cong. Rec., 18 June 1964, pp. 14318–14319.

63. B. Goldwater, ‘The forgotten American,’ Human Events, XVIII, 27 January 1961, pp. 1–21.

64. Perlstein, Before the Storm, op. cit, Ref. 1, p. 138.

65. B. Goldwater, ‘Republican fund raiser, Flint, Michigan,’ 107 Cong. Rec., 9 May 1961, pp. 7593–7594.

66. A. Regnery, ‘Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative” transformed American politics,’ The Washington Times, 17 November 2014, available at www.washingtontimes.com/news (accessed 23 March 2015).

67. B. Goldwater, ‘Speech to the convention accepting the republican presidential nomination,’ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm (accessed 13 September 2014).

68. Goldwater, ‘The effect of tax,’ op. cit., Ref. 23. p. 5259 and p. 5260.

69. Goldwater, ‘No time for timid souls,’ op. cit., Ref. 59, p. 8355.

70. Ibid., p. 8355.

71. Ibid., p. 8356.

72. Goldwater, ‘Republican fund raiser,’ op. cit., Ref. 65, pp. 7593–7594.

73. Goldwater, ‘Federal aid,’ op. cit., Ref. 25, pp. 17291–17292.

74. Ibid., p. 17293.

75. Ibid., pp. 17294–17295.

76. B. Goldwater, ‘The state of the nation,’ 106 Cong. Rec., 15 March 1960, pp. 5571–5577 at p. 5571. Emphasis added.

77. Ibid., p. 5572. Emphasis added.

78. Goldwater, ‘Air war college speech,’ op. cit., p. 582.

79. Ibid., p. 582.

80. Ibid., p. 585.

81. Goldwater, ‘Vote against,’ op. cit., Ref. 62, p. 14319.

82. Ibid., p. 14312.

83. Hammerback, ‘Barry Goldwater’s rhetorical legacy,’ op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 329.

84. Perlstein, op. cit., Ref. 1, pp. 501–501, and Middendorf, op. cit., Ref. 1, pp. 207–209.

85. P. Dorey, ‘The rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher,’ in Richard Hayton and Andrew Crines (Eds) Conservative Orators from Baldwin to Cameron (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 103–120.

86. Donaldson, Liberalism, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 293.

87. M. Kazin, ‘Why all the republican party’s presidential candidates believe the same thing,’ Slate, 30 March 2015, available at http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/03/ted_cruz_and_other_republican_party_presidential_candidates_agree_on_almost.html (accessed 28 April 2015).

88. A.C. Paulson, ‘From umbrella parties to polarized parties,’ in Crotty (Ed), op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 73.

89. K. Rove, Courage and Consequence. My Life as a Conservative in the Fight (New York: Threshold Publications, 2010), p. 7. Characteristically, Goldwater described AuH₂O as tasting like ‘piss’.

90. Hess, In A Cause, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 158.

91. Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 81–82.

92. K. O’Hara, ‘Conservatism, epistemology and risk,’ Unpublished paper (University of Southampton, 2015), p. 19–20.

93. Bozell, ‘Goldwater’s leadership,’ op. cit., Ref. 17, p. 74.

94. Perlstein, Before the Storm, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 339.