In 1964, America’s conservatives ran one straight up the middle, staking their fortunes on an unabashed, fire-breathing right-winger named Barry Goldwater.<\/p>\n
Goldwater wanted to roll back Social Security and he promised to block the Democrats’ plan to implement Medicare and Medicaid.<\/p>\n
He lost to Lydon Johnson — architect of the war on poverty — in one of the most lopsided elections in US history, garnering roughly 38% of the vote.<\/p>\n
For a generation after that defeat, until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, moderates ruled the GOP.\u00a0 But in the decades since, the Right has emerged bit by bit to once again define the Republican movement.<\/p>\n
Two years after Democrats drubbed them again in the 2008 elections, the GOP has doubled-down on its conservatism, spurred by the tea party movement and by insurgent candidates from Alaska to Kentucky.<\/p>\n
Establishment Republicans seen as staunchly conservative a few years ago were either kicked aside by primary voters, or forced to tack hard to the right.<\/p>\n
John McCain, the maverick from Arizona who once regularly crafted bipartisan centrist legislation, survived only by reinventing himself as a build-that-darn-fence outsider.<\/p>\n
It appears that Lisa Murkowski, the moderate from Alaska, won’t survive her challenge last night from a staunch Sarah Palin conservative.<\/p>\n
What this leaves us with is a rematch of 1964.<\/p>\n
You have a Democratic Party that is still largely defined by its loyalty to those war-on-poverty ear programs, and by a Lyndon Johnson style of establishment-center-left politics.<\/p>\n
And you have a Republican Party that promises a kind of counter-revolution that’s very much from Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of A Conservative Playbook.<\/p>\n
Like Goldwater, a lot of the GOP’s candidates are prone to saying outlandish things that get them in trouble.<\/p>\n
Some Democrats think the Republicans have screwed up, nominating a field that’s just too far-right for Main Street voters, even in a year when the economy has people mad as hornets.<\/p>\n
I’m not so sure.\u00a0 In some ways the country is more volatile and impulsive than in 1964.<\/p>\n
And these days, the comfort we take in our social safety net is off-set by the nerve-wracking size of our national debt.<\/p>\n
When the votes are counted in November, this could finally turn out to be Barry Goldwater’s year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1964, America’s conservatives ran one straight up the middle, staking their fortunes on an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[886],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2535,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/2535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}