48 years ago, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona led the Republican Party to total disaster in the Presidential Election of 1964. He was seen as dangerous in foreign policy, and wishing to wipe out the New Deal of FDR. And he had a tendency to have a loose mouth!
But if Barry Goldwater was alive today and involved in following the political scene, he would be vehemently against former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum without any doubt. The question is why would this be so?
The answer is that Barry Goldwater throughout his life was a libertarian, who believed that people’s PRIVATE lives were just that, private! He would be opposed to any interference in the social issues that the Republican Party is so wedded to in today’s political environment.
He made it clear over time in his later years that he was opposed to the Religious Right, the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, led by preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He believed in total separation of church and state, and believed it was not the business of politicians to get involved in religious causes and promotion.
Goldwater declared his opposition to the so called Pro Life movement, believing in the right of women to control their own bodies, and therefore, to abortion rights.
Goldwater would have been shocked to have politicians wish to outlaw contraception, therefore effectively promoting poor people having children they could not afford, and which would impoverish them further.
Goldwater believed also in gay rights, and in no discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military, stating that in a foxhole, no one would care about another’s sexual orientation, as long as one could shoot straight!
Goldwater would be stunned at the support that Rick Santorum received in last night’s primary in Missouri, and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. He would condemn the totalitarian mind of Santorum, who complains about government interfering in any form in economic regulation, but has no problem in interference in social regulation!
Santorum has a wife who adores him, and gave up her profession of law to produce eight children for him. She looks at him as if he is perfect, a god like figure, in itself a sickening display! That may be fine for Rick and his wife, if she chooses to be like a 1950s “Ozzie and Harriet” or “Father Knows Best” wife. But it is NOT what a vast majority of women in America are going to allow in their lives, that the men order them around and control their very existence!
And gay Americans are not going to allow a hate monger, religious zealot like Rick Santorum to control who they love or marry, or any other aspect of their lives!
The candidacy of Rick Santorum will NOT be accepted by the nation at large, and if the GOP is smart, they will stop him as a danger to basic human rights and freedom, with his totalitarian ideas!