Goldwater and Trump

A comparison that is repeatedly made by Democrats and establishment Republicans concerns Trump’s campaign and the disastrous defeat of GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964. This comparison is, unfortunately, more often than not abused. For example, Shermichael Singleton, a Republican consultant, inThe Hill (June 7) faults Trump for replicating Goldwater’s “alienation of minority voters” from the GOP. This estrangement allegedly began when Goldwater took issue with the Public Accommodations Clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yet the black vote for Republican presidential candidates had been declining for decades before Goldwater became a presidential candidate, going all the way back to the electoral victory of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

Further, despite Eisenhower’s success in winning almost 40% of black voters in 1952, running, incidentally, against a Democratic ticket with a Southern segregationist vice presidential candidate, the black vote had moved dramatically into the Democratic column before Goldwater’s crack-up. Finally, there is no evidence that Trump is doing worse among minorities than that exemplary establishment Republican Mitt Romney. Right now the Donald is polling about 15 % of the black vote, which is well beyond what Romney and McCain obtained.

Of course, the neocons and their epigones have been triangulating since Adam. They pretend to be on the Right when they’re muscling in on what had been right-wing assets. But then they play to their friends on the Left when they accuse their opponents of being racists, anti-Semites or self-hating Jews.  They play all angles and usually win.  But at last, they may have reached an impasse. Some may have gone too far fraternising with Hill while frenetically slimming the GOP nominee. Trump will owe them nothing but the back of his fist if he prevails; while Ms Clinton can dispose of these loud-mouthed adventurers like soiled Kleenex once she’s in the White House.

I’ve just heard the witness Jonah Goldberg explain to Hugh Hewitt how the movement will have to carry out “new purges” in order to get rid of the extremists. One might hope that Jonah will be among those purged. What comes around sometimes goes around.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

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