The Goldwater Rush
From MURRAY KEMPTON
WASHINGTON
AA ND now there would appear to be no lions 1,,.visible in Senator Goldwater's path to the Republican nomination and only a pride would serve. The implausible seems to have become the inevitable.
Goldwater's opponents in his own party are being blamed now for having permitted what they so very well knew ought not to have happened to reach the point of happening. That seems hardly fair. They operated by the rules of their own experience, which instructed them that, since Senator Goldwater is a symbol of non- adjustment in a politics whose spiritual essence is adjustment, he could not get the nomination. Even that part of Senator Goldwater which is itself keenly professional seems always to have been dubious of his own prospects. It is a good practice in the management of a political party to prefer the easy way to the hard one. The way in Senator Goldwater's case seemed particularly easy because he is as modest and yielding in his personal ambitions as he is insistent and intract- able in his ideological pretensions. Still, the Senator was certain to come to the GOP conven- tion with the inflamed devotion of no less than a third of its delegates, and his partisans, unlike himself, would not suffer his sacri,fice patiently.
General Eisenhower, who practices the easy way more subtly than any politician in the life- time of most Americans, issued a statement describing his ideal Republican candidate which sounded designed for no other purpose than Goldwater's exclusion one week before the California primary. It appeared certain that this delicate gesture would be enough to beat Gold-
water in California, so certain, in fact, that a few days later Eisenhower told the press in Boston that he had no intention of reading Goldwater out of the party. He is a man who has taught us never to think of his confusions as uncalculated; we ought to assume that the General, thinking the battle over, had begun to bind up the wounded.
But now Goldwater has won California—the only battle really he has won—and it carries all the weight that belongs to the last battle. It is the more massive because, since Oregon, his opponents could not argue that in Rockefeller he defeated a candidate already beaten by him- self; and, because very few reasonable men believed Goldwater would win in California, his partisans now have some answer to all the reasonable men who say that he cannot win in a national election.
He seems certain to arrive at the Republican convention next month with at least 600 of the 655 votes he would need for nomination. There is nothing in the prospect of the intervening five weeks to inspire confidence in the resistance of the 100 or so more delegates not quite decided to surrender to him; they would require, just to begin with, the sight of a leader and a candidate; and those actively opposed are divided and in disarray with few traces of the will for the massive blow which is all that they could hope to save them now.
General Eisenhower is the only plausible oppo- sition leader, and Governor Scranton of Pennsyl- vania the only alternative candidate yet un- wounded. The General and the Governor met for eighty-five minutes last Saturday and th mere report that they had held a conversatio was enough to renew hopes for the resistanc These hopes seem now to have foundered. retired President has real power in his party onl so long as he is careful never to declare himsel against a real tide, and Scranton's own postur argues that the history which brought him thi far unwounded had in it elements which hardl left him deserving. He remained neutral throu the California primary; after it was over he tol the journalists that he did not yet know of an serious differences between himself and Senato Goldwater and that he was reluctant to join an coalition, against anyone. He left his audito half-convinced that he would take a vice-presi• dential nomination on the Goldwater ticket and his advocates reduced to arguing that Governor Scranton did not really feel the way he talked This excuse, while too thin to have any prac tical effect under the circumstances, may have been correct. Scranton was reported to have spent much of last weekend waiting for a call from Governor Rockefeller tendering his sup port. That call does not seem to have come; and Rockefeller's silence may have been more honourable than Scranton's hope. Rockefellef with all his scars upon him can hardly be asked to be charitable to neutrals.
The resistance to Goldwater seemed then more and more only a prelude to his formal acce7 Lance. The Republican Governors, most of theta appalled at the prospect of Goldwater's candidacy, have invited him to a conference to discuss his policies; as practical men they seem to have fallen back on the American political tradition that, when they have a chance at national office, the most extreme men turn to• wards the centre. They cling to the hope that Goldwater can be grouped and perhaps even contained by a moderate campaign platform. It is hard not to think they have misjudged their man; Goldwater would far rather give up hit delegates than his notions.
He believes that ordinary members of the) ohn Birch Society are curious and serious students of history, that the rich are rich from special merit and the poor are poor from special demerit, that the Soviets are powerful only because some of our leaders were traitors and most of the rest were cowards. Mr. Scranton has said that 'he has it on good authority that the Senator is now at favour of letting Civil Rights through; but if his influence weighed enough and he chose to use it, there could be no civil rights law.
We must accept the melancholy assurance that Goldwater will carry those principles through his campaign. He will begin as a minority candidate in a desperate circumstance; his situation almost commands him to arouse and shake the majority with the message that the country has been sold, and that its President is a scoundrel. He will play on fear in matters foreign and he will have to hope for hate in matters domestic. He could only win if some calamity at home or abroad made his case persuasive. The result must be the dirtiest campaign we have lived through in this generation; Goldwater is a pleasant and decent man, but he is incapable of concealing his aims.
The effect of his nomination will be to bring tit all down to the foul rag-and:bone shop of the heart and we shall have to begin, when it is over,
to build a ladder back up again. Goldwater might not be so bad a President as he sounds, although
the prospect is not spacious. But he will certainly be a dreadful candidate, the first we have ever had who can do as much damage in seeking the office as he might in holding it.
Previous page
