What’s forgotten about Barry Goldwater today is how divisive he was…among Republicans.
When Goldwater launched his march toward the 1964 nomination, he seemed certain to take the party over a cliff. Which he eventually did.
Why didn’t other Republicans fight harder? One reason was that, by mid-1964, most realized Lyndon Johnson was a shoo-in for re-election. They figured the best way to discredit Goldwater, and his movement, was by giving him his head.
One forgotten Goldwater fact is no one of consequence wanted to be his running mate. He finally had to enlist party chair William Miller of New York, who was so much of a nobody that he ended his career doing the first AmEx "Do you know who I am" ad.
Fast-forward 40 years. Democrats thought the 2004 nomination was a pearl of great price. They got the guy they wanted — John Kerry. And their loss was narrowed.
But they missed the boat of history.
Yes, Howard Dean is Barry Goldwater. But he is much better-placed than Goldwater was to achieve results.
The Netroots movement is to our time what the conservative movement was to the 1960s. It is forward-looking, and its ideology is, simply, to fight — to fight the GOP everywhere, on every issue, with every weapon, as they perceive Republicans have been fighting them.
Howard Dean represented this idea from the first time he stepped on the national stage, in San Francisco, in 2003.
"I’m Howard Dean, and I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Great line.
Where Goldwater was an idea man, however, Dean is a party-builder. He has encouraged all sorts of people to get involved in politics. He has put party organizers into every state. That bore fruit this week as Montana nominated a "Netroots" candidate, Jon Tester, who immediately became a heavy favorite to knock off Republican incumbent Conrad Burns. In Montana.
Does the future hold a Presidency for Howard Dean? Probably not. In the next Thesis of American politics, Dean may be too conservative. He’s actually cautious on social issues, fiscally very conservative.
But I’d still vote for him in a heartbeat, against anyone else. Just as I’m sure many in my father’s generation would have voted for Goldwater. You never forget your first political love.
So now we’ve identified most of the major players in our 1966 game. We’ve shown off Reagan, Rockefeller, Nixon and Goldwater on the ascending side, and McCarthy, Humphrey, and Robert Kennedy on the descending side.
What’s left are bit players, harder choices.
So who’s George Romney now? (No, it’s not his son Mitt.) Romney was elected Governor of Michigan in 1966 and seen as the "Great Hope" of the moderate GOP. This after making a name for himself at American Motors, later acquired by Chrysler (later acquired by Mercedes-Benz).
This is the wing of the ascendent party which was to be discarded by the new Thesis of Nixon-Reagan-Bush. That’s how the game is played.
Nope, what you’re looking for now is, not a liberal Republican, but a conservative Democrat. And if he’s not in office now, so much the better.
Good luck, until next time we play The 1966 Game.
Assuming the election wasn’t rigged, I’m sure Dean would have beat Bush in 2004. There were a lot of people who hated Kerry more than Bush. Dean was a credible anti-Bush candidate and only a question mark nationally instead of a proven sucker. Choosing Kerry to run against Bush was like nominating a tax-audit to run against a root cannal.
Assuming the election wasn’t rigged, I’m sure Dean would have beat Bush in 2004. There were a lot of people who hated Kerry more than Bush. Dean was a credible anti-Bush candidate and only a question mark nationally instead of a proven sucker. Choosing Kerry to run against Bush was like nominating a tax-audit to run against a root cannal.