The Conservative King

Out of his suite at Chicago's Sheraton-Blackstone last week strode Barry Morris Goldwater, his jaw squared, his iron-grey hair brushed back. A flood of humanity, with its placards and dizzying array of Goldwater-for-President buttons, heaved against him as he tried to push his way through. "God bless you!" they cried. "The country needs you, Barry!" they yelled. "I want to shake your hand! You're the only real Republican in the running!" A man thrust a book under his nose shouting "Autograph my Bible!" and handed him a copy of Barry's credo, The Conscience of a Conservative.

Goldwater smiled a tight smile at the faithful, but he did not break his stride. Long the rising Senate spokesman of Republican conservatives--and, to his irritation, of wild-eyed fringe groups as well --Barry Goldwater found himself in the national eye as he spoke out in wrath against the Nixon-Rockefeller platform agreement ("Governor Rockefeller," he told the Arizona delegation, "is out to destroy the Republican Party"). By convention's end, Goldwater, in some imperceptible investiture, had been crowned king of the nation's conservatives just as surely as Dick Nixon won the nomination.

"How They'd Crow!" Like Adlai Stevenson, his opposite number in Los Angeles, Goldwater found that he could draw a fervent crowd wherever he went. But unlike Adlai, Goldwater coldly counted delegates before listening to the hot promises of his friends. If he could find as many as 300, he told one group, he would push ahead for the nomination, if only to make conservatism's pull felt. "If I went in and got less than 100 votes," he said, "how they'd crow! I know what the Lipp-manns and the Alsops and the Childses would say--conservatism is dead. I've had enough rumors to be elected king, but not one important party pro has come to offer his support, and I can still count only 61 votes."

Nonetheless he did nothing to discourage Arizona's Governor Paul Fannin from nominating Barry Goldwater for the presidency. The hall thundered with a Goldwater demonstration. Youngsters carrying standards bearing his picture marched down the aisles; a brass band of Arizona Indians trooped along behind them. In the family box, Margaret Goldwater and her daughter Peggy wept for joy.

Beating Heart. Goldwater, having made a ringing speech on behalf of G.O.P. senatorial candidates two nights before, now rose to withdraw his name, but he did not stop there. At that shining moment he held what he wanted most: the attention of millions who would hear the conservative message, including a hint of the conservative dream that today's political parties must some day be realigned into conservatives and liberals. He shot one low blow at the Democrats ("dedicated to the destruction of this country!"). Dramatically, he proclaimed that he was standing with the Republican ticket, but he made no bones about his differences with G.O.P. middle-of-the-roaders. "Now you conservatives and all Republicans, I'd like you to listen to this," he said. "We've had our chance, and I think the conservatives have made a splendid showing at this convention. Let's, if we want to take this party back--let's get to work."

It was an effective parting shot from a man whose blunt talk had gained him the attention and respect of people of all ideologies and more strength in his own party than he could have hoped for. That strength would come in handy later on: if Nixon should lose, Barry Goldwater plans to fight Nelson Rockefeller for control of the party, in which the pulse of the conservative spirit, like Sleeping Beauty's heart, still beats.

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