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One of the last decent Republicans... (Original Post) Playinghardball Nov 2012 OP
ugh. I can name a dozen republicans better than Goldwater cali Nov 2012 #1
Chuck Hagel Schema Thing Nov 2012 #4
not in the same league as those I named cali Nov 2012 #5
Hagel +1. Plus Snowe and Susan Collins, moderates who would compromise.... Honeycombe8 Nov 2012 #29
Unfortunately Jim Leach brought us the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act progressoid Nov 2012 #11
Susie Collins and maybe Olympia Snowe and Mike Castle obamanut2012 Nov 2012 #12
No way, Collins. Snowe has taken her work seriously, but almost always ended up dancing with Maineman Nov 2012 #18
Well, she IS a Repubilcan, as is Collins. They should vote Republican, or what's the point? Honeycombe8 Nov 2012 #31
Well that IS the problem friend. Comprise isn't a dirty word. These 2 women voted southernyankeebelle Nov 2012 #51
To me, Collins and Snowe are useless. The once in a while vote, and the ass kissing needed to... winstars Nov 2012 #27
While I dislike the bitterness, I must agree with you. mountain grammy Nov 2012 #47
Don't forget John Chafee. GoCubsGo Nov 2012 #19
Gov. Tom McCall ErikJ Nov 2012 #22
Tom was and is my hero. classof56 Nov 2012 #39
McCall was a great governor inspite of his party lumpy Nov 2012 #54
When I moved here and learned about McCall, he became one of my favorite past Bluenorthwest Nov 2012 #60
+1 WheelWalker Nov 2012 #63
Chafee is an independent now. nt Honeycombe8 Nov 2012 #28
John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Millicent Fenwick (NJ) pnwmom Nov 2012 #42
Thanks for naming the better Republicans. Kokonoe Nov 2012 #53
basically, if you're not far to the left of center.... tomp Nov 2012 #62
Gov Dan Evans. n/t lumberjack_jeff Nov 2012 #64
Other admirable Republicans. longship Nov 2012 #2
Arlen Specter was one of the last decent Republicans (most of the time) Freddie Nov 2012 #7
He failed to respect women. lumpy Nov 2012 #55
He was the Ron Paul of his generation...........Because he suckered a lot of Liberals thelordofhell Nov 2012 #3
Thanks, reminds me of this LTTE: freshwest Nov 2012 #10
McCain is a spoiled brat carpetbagger thelordofhell Nov 2012 #30
+1000 DeSwiss Nov 2012 #32
Just a snippet from wike cali Nov 2012 #6
Eisenhower had tax rates at 91% to pay off WWII, back when Republicans were fiscally conservative RepublicansRZombies Nov 2012 #8
The Democratic-controlled US Congress had tax rates at 91%. Spider Jerusalem Nov 2012 #15
He had the decency to acknowledge Freddie Nov 2012 #9
In your gut you know he's nuts. alphafemale Nov 2012 #13
Goldwater? Genghis_Sean Nov 2012 #14
Recommended quinnox Nov 2012 #16
Ironically fightthegoodfightnow Nov 2012 #17
He was right on some issues, wrong on many others NoGOPZone Nov 2012 #20
In comparison to these MFers, even Nixon seems "decent". MessiahRp Nov 2012 #59
He and his companion shoved me out of the way Bluestar Nov 2012 #21
The only decent Republicans do not support the Republican platform, and so valerief Nov 2012 #23
Another Az Senator... ProudProgressiveNow Nov 2012 #24
"In your heart you know he's right; FAR right." Listen to "Barry's Boys"---- WinkyDink Nov 2012 #25
GMTA. I was thinking of that slogan as well. greatauntoftriplets Nov 2012 #26
Give credit where credit is due... ReRe Nov 2012 #33
John Danforth was/is a good man...... missingfink Nov 2012 #34
I just goes to show ballaratocker Nov 2012 #35
Goldwater would have been more aggressive toward Vietnam nam still_one Nov 2012 #36
You'll probably like this: DeSwiss Nov 2012 #37
Certainly very prescient! AAO Nov 2012 #38
Goldwater was socially ahead of his time and right about the Fundies but.. GatorOrange Nov 2012 #40
Just goes to show how far afield in nut land the republicans are harvesting... alphafemale Nov 2012 #41
Barry Goldwater supported veterans benefits for Women frogmarch Nov 2012 #43
Making one intelligent statement does not make him decent. Curmudgeoness Nov 2012 #44
TR: "A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university... Faryn Balyncd Nov 2012 #45
We forgot Alan Simpson from the Simpson-Bowles Commission PennsylvaniaMatt Nov 2012 #46
Simpson is vile enough to choke a maggot TheKentuckian Nov 2012 #61
chuck percy and ev dirksen from illinois madrchsod Nov 2012 #48
I actually was at a Bakersfield convention with both Barry Goldwater and Gerald Ford. airplaneman Nov 2012 #49
Senator Goldwater was a real libertarian, ahead of his time on a few issues, mountain grammy Nov 2012 #50
Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yeah, yeah; "states' rights principle." WinkyDink Nov 2012 #52
IMO one of the most batshit crazy wingnuts of the 1960s. Goldwater only Raine Nov 2012 #56
Goldwater mellowed out in his later years Zambero Nov 2012 #57
Goldwater was a true conservative dlwickham Nov 2012 #58
 

cali

(114,904 posts)
1. ugh. I can name a dozen republicans better than Goldwater
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:20 PM
Nov 2012

Jim Jeffords, Ed Brooks, Charles Percy, Mark Hatfield, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Leach, George Aiken, Lowell Weiker, Robert Stafford

 

cali

(114,904 posts)
5. not in the same league as those I named
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:37 PM
Nov 2012

not even close. Those named were true liberals and progressives.

Honeycombe8

(37,648 posts)
29. Hagel +1. Plus Snowe and Susan Collins, moderates who would compromise....
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:57 PM
Nov 2012

and didn't cowtow to the evangelicals. Snowe left because the extremists had taken over their party.

Maineman

(854 posts)
18. No way, Collins. Snowe has taken her work seriously, but almost always ended up dancing with
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:12 PM
Nov 2012

boss man McConnell.

Honeycombe8

(37,648 posts)
31. Well, she IS a Repubilcan, as is Collins. They should vote Republican, or what's the point?
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:59 PM
Nov 2012

But they're both moderates and would compromise and speak like logical, reasonable human beings. They certainly don't side with the tea partiers.

 

southernyankeebelle

(11,304 posts)
51. Well that IS the problem friend. Comprise isn't a dirty word. These 2 women voted
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 09:01 PM
Nov 2012

with them knowning it was against the best interest of the country. Personnally am kind of tired that we have parties. We should vote for the person who is going to help their citizens as a whole for the good of the country. Yes there are some things that each state needs and comprises should be done. But the majority of times these women voted even against womens issues.

winstars

(4,214 posts)
27. To me, Collins and Snowe are useless. The once in a while vote, and the ass kissing needed to...
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:47 PM
Nov 2012

get that once in a while vote equals so much wasted time for us. And then the frigging million times they screw us in the end and vote with the scum. Fuck them and all of their BullShit... Too many times we came away with zilch after almost giving away the store. They only seem moderate because of the other nut jobs but in the end they are/were essentially useless to us. Fuck them!!!

Mike Castle, didn't he have that song "Witchcraft" in the 50's??

 

ErikJ

(6,335 posts)
22. Gov. Tom McCall
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:36 PM
Nov 2012

of Oregon. He was probably the best environmental politician of all time. He created the land use laws of Oregon and the 1st bottle bill and lots more.

classof56

(5,376 posts)
39. Tom was and is my hero.
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:23 PM
Nov 2012

The day he left us was one of the saddest days of my life. Oregon lost its greatest friend and advocate. I worked on the Capitol Mall in Salem, walked over to see him lying in state in the Capitol rotunda, wept copious tears. Among his many accomplishments, Oregon's beaches remain open to the public--a hard-fought battle, but Tom prevailed. So far, no one has proved his equal, but I hold out hope!

 

Bluenorthwest

(45,319 posts)
60. When I moved here and learned about McCall, he became one of my favorite past
Sun Nov 25, 2012, 11:10 AM
Nov 2012

political figures and along with TR and Abe he makes 3 Republicans on that list. What a brilliant man he was.

longship

(40,416 posts)
2. Other admirable Republicans.
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:26 PM
Nov 2012

Nancy Landon Kassebaum, former KS senator, and current spouse of another admirable Republican former senator,

Howard Baker, from Tennessee, who figured prominently in the Senate Waterhate investigation. He is the one who came up with, "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

Plus, another of my favorites, Edward Everette Dirkson, senator from IL, whose mellifluous voice I can still hear in my mind's ear.

All these were honorable people and Republicans. I voted for Senator Kassebaum twice because she was far more liberal than her Democratic opponents, who at any rate stood no chance against Nancy.

Thanks for the OP.

Freddie

(9,232 posts)
7. Arlen Specter was one of the last decent Republicans (most of the time)
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:44 PM
Nov 2012

Until he saw the light late in life.

freshwest

(53,661 posts)
10. Thanks, reminds me of this LTTE:
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:57 PM
Nov 2012
To Washington Post Letters:

Steven F. Hayward wrote: “The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level… .”


No.

The single largest defect of modern conservatism is that it has ruined the nation.

Conservatives do not have ideas; they have interests.

Conservatives are not “thinkers”; they are rationalizers who give an intellectual gloss to their belief that an alliance of predatory businesspeople and religious extremists should rule the rest of us.

The wreckage caused by modern conservatism lies all around us, and speaks for itself: If conservatism isn’t dead, it should be.

DANIEL ROSEN
Baltimore

10/9/2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

http://shoqvalue.com/bestLTEever

Which is what your article also shows. The same can be said of McCain, who has also been a conservative opportunist despite his public image.

thelordofhell

(4,569 posts)
30. McCain is a spoiled brat carpetbagger
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:59 PM
Nov 2012

A military "legacy" brat who skipped into my fair state and ingratiated himself to be in the Senate here. He should have gone down during the Keating Five investigations, but he shit on Dennis DeConcini and caused him to go down with it instead. He's a despicable opportunist.

 

DeSwiss

(27,137 posts)
32. +1000
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:05 PM
Nov 2012


''The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.''

~John Kenneth Galbraith
 

cali

(114,904 posts)
6. Just a snippet from wike
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:40 PM
Nov 2012

Goldwater soon became most associated with labor-union reform and anti-communism; he was an active supporter of the conservative coalition in Congress. However, he rejected the wildest fringes of the anti-communist movement; in 1956, he sponsored the passage through the Senate of the final version of the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act, despite vociferous opposition from opponents who claimed that the Act was a communist plot to establish concentration camps in Alaska. His work on labor issues led to Congress passing major anti-corruption reforms in 1957, and an all-out campaign by the AFL-CIO to defeat his 1958 reelection bid. He voted against the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, but he never actually charged any individual with being a communist/Soviet agent. Goldwater emphasized his strong opposition to the worldwide spread of communism in his 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative. The book became an important reference text in conservative political circles.

In 1964, Goldwater ran a conservative campaign that emphasized "states' rights".[16] Goldwater's 1964 campaign was a magnet for conservatives since he opposed interference by the federal government in state affairs. Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation and had supported the original senate version of the bill, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do or not do business with whomever they chose.[17]

All this appealed to white Southern Democrats, and Goldwater was the first Republican to win the electoral votes of all of the Deep South states (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) since Reconstruction[18] (although Dwight Eisenhower did carry Louisiana in 1956). However, Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act proved devastating to his campaign everywhere outside the South (besides Dixie, Goldwater won only in Arizona, his home state), contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964.

While Goldwater had been depicted by his opponents in the Republican primaries as a representative of a conservative philosophy that was extreme and alien, his voting records show that his positions were in harmony with those of his fellow Republicans in the Congress. What distinguished him from his predecessors was, according to Hans J. Morgenthau, his firmness of principle and determination, which did not allow him to be content with mere rhetoric.[19]

Goldwater fought in 1971 to stop US funding of the United Nations after the People's Republic of China was admitted to the organization. He said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater

 
8. Eisenhower had tax rates at 91% to pay off WWII, back when Republicans were fiscally conservative
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:47 PM
Nov 2012

He also warned us of the Military Industrial Complex.
 

Spider Jerusalem

(21,786 posts)
15. The Democratic-controlled US Congress had tax rates at 91%.
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:05 PM
Nov 2012

Which was lower than the high of 94% in 1944 and '45, and only applied to incomes over $400K per annum (that's $3.3 million in current dollars, allowing for inflation).

Freddie

(9,232 posts)
9. He had the decency to acknowledge
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:50 PM
Nov 2012

That religion has no place in politics. Unlike his protege St. Ronnie, who encouraged the alliance of the $$ Repugs and the Religious Right that is still destroying this country (although the election gives me hope).
"In your heart you know he's right...in your guts you know he's nuts!"

 

quinnox

(20,600 posts)
16. Recommended
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:05 PM
Nov 2012

There is also a well known story about Goldwater's effort to look into the UFO issue, and he was flatly told he wasn't in a position to know and not to ask again.

fightthegoodfightnow

(7,042 posts)
17. Ironically
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:08 PM
Nov 2012

What Goldwater could not see in the 60's (civil rights laws to protect people of all races) he could in the 90's (civil rights laws to protect people of all sexual orientations).

While I applaud his actions in the 90's, I can't help but wonder whether his embrace of such laws then was penance for his earlier inactions on race.

NoGOPZone

(2,971 posts)
20. He was right on some issues, wrong on many others
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:26 PM
Nov 2012

Unfortunately, that likely qualifies as 'decent' by current Republican standards.

Bluestar

(1,400 posts)
21. He and his companion shoved me out of the way
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 06:33 PM
Nov 2012

in a hotel hallway at the RNC in 1980 (I worked nearby).

Just another entitled, elitist a-hole if you ask me.

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
33. Give credit where credit is due...
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:06 PM
Nov 2012
K&R

Goldwater was wrong on most of his ideas, but this is one that he got spot on correct. However, in hindsight, it may have had allot to do with his defeat. And the wingers never forgot it. Thus the rise of the Paul Wyrick's (sp?), Jerry Falwell's and his Moral Majority, etc., etc., etc. And here we are. I, for one, am staunch when it come to separation of Church and State. It's fine we have freedom of religion, part of the reason many of our ancestors came here to begin with. Those beginners in our country had a rough time of it surviving, to say the least. And their religious beliefs were the only hope they had. Heck, right up to my Mother who lost her first husband in WWII. Her religion is all she had to help her cope and face life with two little boys under age 3. And she relied on that religion right up to the day she died. She died in peace. I could go and on about Mom... she was a true Patriot and liberal as they come her whole life. I look at things somewhat differently, though. Because I could envision religious zealots in our government cramming their beliefs down our citizen's throats, legislating against our rights. And that's exactly what has happened. Just opining....

missingfink

(174 posts)
34. John Danforth was/is a good man......
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:07 PM
Nov 2012

who disappointed me only one time - when he stood by Clarence Thomas during his SC confirmation hearing. Other than that, he was as decent a Republican as there ever was.

ballaratocker

(126 posts)
35. I just goes to show
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:16 PM
Nov 2012

that the nation was way more liberal on certain measures then. These days if you don't march in lock step to the entire Republican platform, you are clearly liberal in their eyes.

 

DeSwiss

(27,137 posts)
37. You'll probably like this:
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:20 PM
Nov 2012
Barry Goldwater's Left Turn


[font color=gray]Bary Goldwater in Indiana, 1964
Barry Goldwater campaigns in Indiana in October 1964. (AP)[/font]


By Lloyd Grove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 28, 1994; Page C01


*snip*

At 85, after a life in politics spanning five decades (he retired from the Senate in 1987), Mr. Conservative has found himself an unlikely new career: as a gay rights activist. While that's not his sole pursuit – he returned to Capitol Hill yesterday to testify in favor of scenic overflights of the Grand Canyon – in recent years he's championed homosexuals serving in the military and has worked locally to stop businesses in Phoenix from hiring on the basis of sexual orientation. This month he signed on as honorary co-chairman of a drive to pass a federal law preventing job discrimination against homosexuals. The effort, dubbed Americans Against Discrimination, is being spearheaded by the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the influential gay lobbying organization.

"The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they're gay," Goldwater asserts. "You don't have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that's what brings me into it."

"He's the kind of spokesman who makes people focus on this issue through new eyes," says Goldwater's co-chair, Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts, a Democrat who ardently opposed his candidacy in 1964. "He causes people to focus on the real issue: Should the country that celebrates life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness allow discrimination for a group of Americans based on sexual preference?"

Gay rights aside, Goldwater is doing lots more to drive would-be disciples nuts. In 1992 he backed a Democrat for Congress over a Christian conservative Republican (his candidate, Karan English, won), and has been applying the full force of his cantankerous personality to frequent denunciations of the religious right and occasional defenses of Bill Clinton – calling a press conference recently to urge Republican critics of Whitewater to "get off his back and let him be president."

Some of the faithful think he's lost his marbles.

"I am often asked by people inside Arizona, and outside of Arizona, about Barry," says Republican John McCain, Goldwater's successor in the Senate, in a tone that suggests he's apologizing for a crazy uncle in the attic. "I always say that Barry Goldwater has the right to say whatever he wants to. He has made his contribution – which transformed the Republican Party from an Eastern elitist organization to the breeding ground for the election of Ronald Reagan." (Goldwater likes to remind McCain, a Vietnam-era Navy pilot who spent 5 ½ years in the "Hanoi Hilton," that if he'd been elected president in 1964, "you wouldn't have spent all those years in a Vietnamese prison camp." McCain's reply: "You're right, Barry. It would have been a Chinese prison camp.&quot

MORE


K&R

GatorOrange

(63 posts)
40. Goldwater was socially ahead of his time and right about the Fundies but..
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:28 PM
Nov 2012

He was overly militaristic and loved to bring nuclear escalation into the equation. Add in the Southern strategy and bringing St. Ronnie into the national spotlight, he's not somebody we should look at as a decent Republican.

Charlie Crist was had some decent moments as FL governor. Chaffee knows how to reach across the aisle. Sadly its harder and harder to find Republicans willing to talk, compromise, or generally express their point of view in a way thats not rubberstamped by the conservative media echo chamber.

 

alphafemale

(18,497 posts)
41. Just goes to show how far afield in nut land the republicans are harvesting...
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:29 PM
Nov 2012

Dems are quoting Goldwater as a Sane Republican?

Wow...

frogmarch

(12,145 posts)
43. Barry Goldwater supported veterans benefits for Women
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:38 PM
Nov 2012

Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) when he was senator, as well as an all-volunteer military and NASA research.

During WWII he was chief supply pilot in the China-Burma-India theater and when my mother died soon after I was born in India (my dad was in the U.S. Army), Goldwater flew in some American baby bottles and canned milk for me and an American baby doll and story books for my 2 1/2 year old sister. When I was in my twenties, on impulse while I was going through old family papers and photos, I wrote to him to say thank you from my sister and me. He remembered us and said we were very welcome, and that he was touched and delighted to have received my note.

Yes, he was a republican, but I’m not going to diss him.

Curmudgeoness

(18,219 posts)
44. Making one intelligent statement does not make him decent.
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:45 PM
Nov 2012

Actually, he had many intelligent statements, but that did not make him reasonable. In fact, if you read much of what he thought, you will find many of the concepts we hear today from the far right conservatives.

Faryn Balyncd

(5,125 posts)
45. TR: "A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university...
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:54 PM
Nov 2012

Theodore Roosevelt:

""A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad."


After Roosevelt dismantled the Northern Security railroad trust in 1904, he eventually developed irreconcilable differences with the right wing of the Republican Party, left the GOP and ran as the candidate for the Progressive/Bull Moose Party in 1912.



From the 1912 platform of the Progressive Party on which former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt ran:



"Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.

"From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

"To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."






Too bad statesmen are in short supply.
















PennsylvaniaMatt

(966 posts)
46. We forgot Alan Simpson from the Simpson-Bowles Commission
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 07:58 PM
Nov 2012

Former U.S. Senator from Wyoming. He is pro-choice, and has said that male legislators should not even vote on the issue, he was opposed to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and has criticized homophobes in his party.

airplaneman

(1,237 posts)
49. I actually was at a Bakersfield convention with both Barry Goldwater and Gerald Ford.
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 08:37 PM
Nov 2012

I thought they were both decent men with political views I could respect. Even Eisenhower fits the bill of a decent republican. No way Romney, Juliano, McCain, Ryan, Boehner, and you name it current republican in the news today gets no more from me but disgust. We need to vote these people into extinction. Todays republicans cant and wont compromise either and all of them seem to think they are on a God level pedestal and their words are gospel to the world.
-Airplane

mountain grammy

(26,571 posts)
50. Senator Goldwater was a real libertarian, ahead of his time on a few issues,
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 08:40 PM
Nov 2012

and off the cliff on most others.

 

WinkyDink

(51,311 posts)
52. Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yeah, yeah; "states' rights principle."
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 09:06 PM
Nov 2012

Goldwater ALSO:

~~wanted he U.S. out of the U.N..

~~"called for substantial cuts in social programs, suggesting that Social Security become optional,

~~and suggested the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam if necessary."

~~"believed that the Tennessee Valley Authority should be sold into the private sector."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater_presidential_campaign,_1964#.27A_choice.2C_not_an_echo.27

~~"his extreme right wing ideology alienated the more moderate wing of the party."
http://www.kennesaw.edu/pols/3380/pres/1964.html

Raine

(30,540 posts)
56. IMO one of the most batshit crazy wingnuts of the 1960s. Goldwater only
Sat Nov 24, 2012, 09:45 PM
Nov 2012

looks "decent" when compared to those today. I was just a kid then but I remember him.

Zambero

(8,954 posts)
57. Goldwater mellowed out in his later years
Sun Nov 25, 2012, 01:17 AM
Nov 2012

He was quite a right-wing firebrand up through the '64 election. In '74 he told Nixon in person that he needed to resign immediately or face impeachment and certain conviction. By that time he had parted company with the GOP on virtually all the social issues championed by the religious right, including abortion, church-state separation and gay rights. In local AZ politics he would occasionally endorse a Democrat over his own party's candidate. And he became much less of a hawk on military matters. As far as I can tell he remained staunchly conservative on fiscal policy. Never wishy-washy, his honesty was never questioned.

dlwickham

(3,316 posts)
58. Goldwater was a true conservative
Sun Nov 25, 2012, 01:21 AM
Nov 2012

he walked the walk and I respect him for that

I would obviously disagree with many of his positions but one I would not would be his position on DADT

After more than 50 years in the military and politics, I am still amazed to see how upset people can get over nothing. Lifting the ban on gays in the military isn't exactly nothing, but it's pretty damned close

Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They'll still be serving long after we're all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.

But most Americans should be shocked to know that while the country's economy is going down the tubes, the military has wasted half a billion dollars over the past decade chasing down gays and running them out of the armed services.

It's no great secret that military studies have proved again and again that there's no valid reason for keeping the ban on gays. Some thought gays were crasy, but then found that wasn't true. then they decided that gays were a security risk, but again the Department of Defense decided that wasn't so-in fact, one study by the Navy in 1956 that was never made public found gays to be good security risks. Even Larry Korb, President Reagan's man in charge of implementing the Pentagon ban on gays, now admits that it was a dumb idea. No wonder my friend Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under President Bush, called it "a bit of an old chestnut"

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/scotts/bulgarians/barry-goldwater.html

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