Going for Gold
Senator Barry Goldwater brought a new brand of Republicanism to American politics, writes Roger Hudson.
His new brand of Republicanism had its birth in William Buckley’s National Review magazine in the 1950s and matured in his own book The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), ghosted by Buckley’s brother-in-law. He was trying to supplant the New Deal orthodoxy, get away from McCarthyism and from the Eisenhower-era Republican identification with East Coast country club elites. He was anti-Communist but also anti-Washington, like many Arizonans, who felt too much of their state was national park or forest, Indian reserve or military base. Big government threatened liberty, whether through civil rights, social security, federal aid for schools, federal welfare, farm programs or the union shop.
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