What Would Goldwater Do?

Charles V ascended his throne after a monumental religious comprimise. He famously intoned:

"Paris is worth a Mass"

The price for Republicans to continue pilfering marginal electoral victories, under Karl Rove's "Thousand Year Campaign", looks like the exact same sell-out. McCain ignored twenty or thirty million Republican primary voters and succumbed to a blackmail deal. Sarah Palin would join his ticket in exchange for getting Megachurch evangelicals to support his candidacy. McCain has been driven to be the President his entire life. He determined that the only way he could win his election was to sell theirPresidency.

(As if the hard-right christians would have voted for Obama..)

The modern conservative movement began with Barry Goldwater fifty years ago. The guy who took over Goldwater's Senate chair just ended it. The White House Republicans will still use the Goldwater brand, but their claim to Goldater's ideological conservatism went out the window with baby Palin's bath-water.

What would Barry say about Palin's religious end-run around 20 million Republican primary voters?

Barry Goldwater went out of his way to have this entered into the public record:


"However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly.

The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate.

I am warning them today:

I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.' "


Senator Barry Goldwater
Congressional Record, September 16, 1981



The (ex) Cowboy knew Barry Golodwater and Sarah Palin is no Barry Goldwater!

Ride for the High Country