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The Dartmouth
July 18, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Hard Right Turn May Hurt GOP in '96

It is a slow, deliberate, marked shift. Yet it is practically a transformation. It has happened before in our history, and may happen again. It is said that politics moves in cycles, and this may well be a cycle. Of course, it may not, and that is the object of my concern.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater came to the forefront of national Republican Party politics. Goldwater represented what was, especially in the 1960's, the newly resurgent conservative wing of the GOP. His candidacy, while supported by many, caused disillusionment for an equal number of Americans. Goldwater's core support was primarily in the South and West, in states such as his home state of Arizona. In the more moderate East and North, Governors such as Nelson Rockefeller of New York and George Romney of Michigan predicted disaster for the Republican Party if Goldwater were to become its standard bearer.

Despite that fact, Goldwater eventually won the Republican Party's nomination for President in 1964. In that year's general election, Goldwater and the GOP were trounced by Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party. It was a direct repudiation of extreme conservatism by the American electorate.

Today, the Republican Party faces a very similar situation. Many members of the GOP, particularly those who vote in the primaries, are putting forth various litmus tests for any potential presidential nominee. They push the candidates toward no-tax pledges and social dogmas that range from stands on affirmative action to wording in welfare provisions. Many of these stands are anathema to segments of the American electorate, and even to constituencies in the GOP. It is unfortunate, in a time only one year after the American voters exercised faith in the Republican Party, electing it to new majorities in Congress, that the party may throw away its opportunity to renew our government. It is unfortunate, but it will occur when an honest desire to re-invent and to re-organize government turns to zealotry.

As a solid Republican, I often times feel ill at ease with my party's new stands on environmental issues, aid for student loans and educational and cultural funding. I desperately worry if my party is excluding races and a gender by its positions on issues that can, and do divide America. I shudder at the increasingly prevalent dogma that government can do no good -- when it has, and can, if directed with the correct amount of thought and energy.

As this primary season approaches, I am beginning to bemoan a process that has pushed every GOP presidential candidate sharply rightward. It is alienating the independent voter, the swing voter and even the moderate Republican. Public clamor for a Colin Powell, or a Bill Bradley, or a Lowell Weicker as an independent candidate is evidence to that effect.

Six months from now, I don't want to see Phil Gramm or Pat Buchanan leading a Republican ticket for the Presidency. In that, I see only a repeat of 1964, and disaster for my party.