Friday, May 06, 2016
In September 1964, in the latter stages of the presidential campaign, William F. Buckley Jr. had one of his finest, yet least known, moments in his long and distinguished career. In the wake of Donald Trump’s primary victory, Buckley’s address to the national convention of Young Americans for Freedom has as much to say to conservatives today as it did a half century ago when he first made it.
The off-the-record speech, entitled “The Impending Defeat of Barry Goldwater” is a rhetorical marvel that combines deft humor, soaring rhetoric, and historical and religious allusions. And it closes with the following stirring words.
If God should grant us a victory at this moment there is time enough to count our unexpected blessings and to exult greatly. But we dishonor the Goldwater movement if we permit ourselves to speak to those recruits we gather as though the walls of Agincourt were hollow eggshells which will come crumbling down under the pressure of our heroic rhetoric. We have in mind, do we not?, a counterrevolution. Counterrevolutions are not accomplished by defeating Nelson Rockefeller or William Scranton [two leaders of the liberal wing of the Republican party]. The enemy is made of sterner stuff. So are we, and we must prove it by showing not a moment’s dismay on November 4 in the likely event that the walls have stood firm against our assault. On that day we must emerge smiling, confident in the knowledge that we weakened those walls, that they will never again stand so firmly against us.
On that day we must be prepared to inform Lyndon Johnson that we too will continue.
There is no sugarcoating it. As with the landslide defeat of Goldwater, the presumptive nomination of Donald Trump by America’s nominally conservative party is a bitter defeat for conservatives. It is said that victory has many fathers, yet defeat is an orphan. Others have discussed at length the fathers of this defeat, but in my mind the principal blame must go to the GOP establishment, which resolutely refused to address the legitimate grievances of the working-class and other disaffected voters whose cause Trump championed, or at least pretended to champion.
And yet, it is important for conservatives not to yield to despair, which in the teaching of Buckley’s Catholic faith (and of others as well) is not merely an error but a grave sin. And even a secular reading would suggest that despair is neither useful nor warranted in this situation. A scarce 16 years after Goldwater’s massacre at the hands of Lyndon Johnson was a conservative rebirth in the Reagan administration, which, whatever its shortcomings, provided the high point of 20th-century American conservatism as a political force. Who knows what might succeed the GOP’s age of Trump? Buckley for one, knew the criticality of grassroots supporters in sustaining the conservative movement in trying times. As Buckley told the crowd:
You may think that the hauteur of [National Review’s] editorial tone suggests a total independence of spirit, a total aloofness from any need for human and compassionate sustenance. That is a front. We need you every bit as urgently as you need us.
That also continues to be true. An army cannot win the day without foot soldiers and National Review readers, with the support they provide, both morally and financially, are some of the most loyal and steadfast in the conservative movement.
Fully cognizant of Goldwater’s impending defeat, Buckley rallied the troops with words that could still serve as a motto for conservatives today as we awaken to a world of a Trump-led GOP and navigate the upcoming campaign season.
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The next and most urgent counsel is to take stock of reality. Reality, during a political campaign, sometimes suggests the advisability of dismissing strategic consideration in favor of tactical imperatives, which call for cultivating, in the Goldwater camp, the morale of an army on the march. . . . But the morale of the army on the march is that of an army that has been promised victory. It is wrong to assume that we shall overcome; and therefore it is right to reason to the necessity of guarding against the utter disarray that sometimes follows a stunning defeat. It is right to take thought, even on the eve of the engagement, about the potential need for regrouping, for gathering together our scattered force.
And indeed we must today gather together our scattered forces and not simply succumb to the despair of the current moment. The strategic imperatives and tactical considerations of this moment, are, I would argue, not necessarily obvious (though I will leave that for another article). But it is important to note that 60 percent of Republicans did not choose Donald Trump, and conservatives, as his strongest opponents in the GOP, are not responsible for him. And Buckley’s reflection on the Goldwater movement equally apply to those of us who wish to maintain conservative principles in an era where, as in Buckley’s time, they are under attack from both Republicans and Democrats.
The Goldwater movement is in the nature of an attempted prison break. It is supremely urgent that the effort be made, gloriously encouraging that we are mobilized to make it: but direfully perilous to proceed on the assumption that we will succeed or to reason that if we do not, the attempt to reach safety cannot ever succeed.
The attempt of conservatives to reach the safe harbor of constitutional governance can succeed, even if conservatives must temporarily execute a prison break from the GOP to do it. Buckley urged conservatives to look forward and do what we can to build on what we have accomplished. And that is not inconsiderable. The 2016 primary season represented an utter repudiation of the ideologically unmoored K Street toadies in the GOP establishment. More than four-fifths of GOP votes went to candidates that arrived on the national scene in the wake of, and in most cases inspired by, the tea-party movement. The runner-up finisher, Ted Cruz, was perhaps the most conservative candidate ever to make a serious run for the GOP nomination. The party showed off an impressive diversity of candidates, both in ideology and background. There is still a long game to be played and won and to believe otherwise is erroneous in both a political and theological sense. Buckley, even at a dark time, understood the critical importance of this long-term perspective.
The point is to win recruits whose attention we might never have attracted but for Barry Goldwater; to win them not only for November 3 but for future Novembers: to infuse the conservative spirit in enough people to entitle us to look about, on November 4, not at the ashes of defeat but at the well-planted seeds of hope, which will flower on a great November day in the future.
Today as conservatives, we must honestly acknowledge that the nomination of Trump means that we have not succeeded. But this setback does not mean that we can never succeed. And indeed this campaign offered more than one candidate under which conservatives could proudly unfurl their banner in 2020.
Fellow conservatives, counterrevolutions are not made by defeating the likes of John Boehner or Roger Stone. The enemy is made of sterner stuff. So are we, and we must prove it by showing not a moment’s dismay at the Republican National Convention this summer when we find a boorish charlatan embracing the endorsement and adulation of the official Republican party amidst a shower of patriotically hued confetti. On that day we must emerge smiling, confident that the principles that we have championed are eternal even if the gods of the electorate are sometimes fickle.
Fellow conservatives, on that day we must be prepared to inform Donald Trump that we too will continue.
No comments:
Post a Comment