Barry Goldwater Quotes
When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.
Barry Goldwater, 1909-1998, U. S. Senator (Republican, AZ), Republican Nominee for President, Interview with The Washington Post, 1994
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was referring to President George W. Bush, who was not only a fundamentalist, born again Christian himself, but included people in his administration and as beneficiaries of his administration specifically because they were religious fundamentalists and in some cases kept other out even filtering for religious belief in the civil service jobs of the Justice Department itself.
He was reacting to the Republicans in Congress passing a special law for a single right to die case in Florida. Ironically Danforth himself had always been considered a conservative and he also was an ordained Episcopalian minister.
What was particularly unusual about this quote was that Cronkite had always been so circumspect about his own political views and opinions and rarely expressed personal criticism of any group or movement. When he was the national anchor for CBS News, he was so non partisan that he became the “most trusted man in America.” By 2007 however, most of the radical religious right had organized a serious movement which unlike other self interest groups which wanted to expand their rights or benefits, much of the radical religious right strove to curtail the rights of other Americans who differed from them as to religious interpretation, concepts and role of government, sound family structure and relationships, gender equality, sex, and personal freedom.
The evangelist had become disillusioned by his experiences with the right wing of the Republican Party in general and President Nixon in particular as he concluded that they had been using him and his ministry for partisan political purposes. He had originally assumed to the contrary. See {629697} .
The Republicans were the secular party at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. It was the Democrats who were the religious party and evangelicals and fundamentalists overwhelmingly supported William Jennings Bryan, the 3 time Democratic Presidential candidate who himself was a religious fundamentalist. Republicans campaigned against the Democrats on separation of church and state issues. See {589654} for a quote on the Republican shift.
Barry Morris Goldwater was an American politician, statesman, businessman, United States Air Force officer, and author who was a five-term Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States in 1964. Goldwater is the politician most often credited with having sparked the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, many political pundits and historians believe he laid the foundation for the conservative revolution to follow, as the grassroots organization and conservative takeover of the Republican party began a long-term realignment in American politics helped to bring about the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.
