“I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.” — Russell Kirk

-| Ronald Reagan: An Extraordinary Politician |-

I am referring to the 50th anniversary of actor Ronald Reagan’s speech, televised nationwide, on October 27, 1964, on behalf of Barry Goldwater for President. The speech eventually became known as, “A Time for Choosing.” Years later, President Reagan wrote of it, “Of course, I didn’t know it then, but that speech was one of the most important milestones in my life—another one of those unexpected turns in the road that led me onto a path I never expected to take.”

What is remarkable about that speech, yet seldom noted, is there was no chance of Goldwater winning by the time Reagan delivered it. Barry Goldwater would lose the election one week later carrying only six states and gathering only 38.5% of the vote. Reagan used valuable national airtime to articulate conservative principles rather than salvage the races of some Senate or House candidates who might have benefited from blurring the differences between Goldwater and Johnson.

Goldwater’s loss was looming in late October 1964. One of his earliest and most prominent backers, William F. Buckley, Jr., had already warned Goldwater’s most enthusiastic supporters in Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) that the Senator would lose. Buckley noted in his YAF speech, “I speak of course of the impending defeat of Barry Goldwater!” Later Buckley suggested, “This is probably Lyndon Johnson’s year, and the Archangel Gabriel running on the Republican ticket probably couldn’t win.”

F. Clifton White, another close Goldwater associate and the Conservative Movement’s political guru of the 1960s, wrote, “Barry Goldwater’s defeat was the most thorough-going rout ever suffered by any candidate of a major political party…the awesome magnitude of the Goldwater defeat affected Republican candidates at all levels.”

Theodore White, the Establishment’s scribe of the time, noted of Goldwater, “Never in any campaign had I seen a candidate so heckled, so provoked by the opposition…so cruelly bill-boarded and tagged.”

Teddy White knew it was not the Johnson forces alone who were vehemently anti-Goldwater. Moderate Republican leaders including New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, “had drawn up the indictment. Lyndon Johnson was the prosecutor. Goldwater was cast as defendant. He was like a dog with a can tied to his tail—the faster he ran, the more the can clattered.”

It was in this rigged courtroom of public opinion that Ronald Reagan offered himself up to serve as the defense attorney for Goldwater and Goldwater’s principles.

Reagan surely knew Goldwater was heading for a bruising defeat. How many of today’s political “leaders” would be willing to risk their future to speak out on behalf of a candidate who could not muster 40% of the vote and whose closest allies had already conceded his defeat just because the candidate had the right principles? Such a speaker would be trashed as “hopelessly, politically naïve,” even dangerous, and accused of ignoring “reality” to tilt at windmills.

In fact, there is no modern equivalent of an emerging or promising personality who has proven willing to champion a losing candidate, one who made fatal mistakes or “blunders” in his campaign, solely to make the case for limited government, individual freedom, and a strong foreign policy.

Read the full article here.[www.breitbart.com]