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View Full Version : Robert Taft vs Barry Goldwater: who is more of a model for us?




Lisle16
03-27-2009, 11:37 AM
I consider myself a Goldwater libertarian conservative. I reject the isolationist aspects of Robert Taft.

However, I do understand that Taft has been a major influence on our movement.

Who are we closer to? Taft or Goldwater?

Kludge
03-27-2009, 11:38 AM
They're both dead and unknown to most of the young.

I pick Ron Paul.

Lisle16
03-27-2009, 11:41 AM
They're both dead and unknown to most of the young.

I pick Ron Paul.

Ron Paul didn't appear out of a vacuum.

How about this: Who was a greater influence on Dr. Paul?

Kludge
03-27-2009, 11:42 AM
Who was a greater influence on Dr. Paul?

I don't know. Someone ought to ask him.


:p

AuH20
03-27-2009, 11:49 AM
Goldwater. He had far too much spine for a libertarian and enough common sense to not fall into the conservative statist camp. He was a true warrior, who could articulate his convictions, while simultaneously disarming his critics. We need another Goldwater to pick up the shield of the fallen and engage these collectivist rogues. No more appeasing or backtracking on statements.



“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ``needed'' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests,'' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

gls
03-27-2009, 11:54 AM
I reject the isolationist aspects of Robert Taft.


Do you consider George Washington to have been an "isolationist"?

Taft was a non-inteventionist, just like Paul is.

Lisle16
03-27-2009, 11:56 AM
Goldwater. He had far too much spine for a libertarian and enough common sense to not fall into the conservative statist camp. He was a true warrior, who could articulate his convictions, while simultaneously disarming his critics. We need another Goldwater to pick up the shield of the fallen and engage these collectivist rogues. No more appeasing or backtracking on statements.

Absolutely. Goldwater was so consistent and principled that he was truly his own man, which is why I prefer him to Taft.

heavenlyboy34
03-27-2009, 11:57 AM
Do you consider George Washington to have been an "isolationist"?

Taft was a non-inteventionist, just like Paul is.

Taft was also a "progressive", which Paul isn't. :cool: Goldwater wins this thread, IMHO. However, if you need someone to TELL you who your role model should be...it's not a very effective "movement"-is it? :eek::confused:

Lisle16
03-27-2009, 11:57 AM
Do you consider George Washington to have been an "isolationist"?

Taft was a non-inteventionist, just like Paul is.

Fair enough.

Lisle16
03-27-2009, 11:59 AM
Taft was also a "progressive", which Paul isn't. :cool: Goldwater wins this thread, IMHO. However, if you need someone to TELL you who your role model should be...it's not a very effective "movement"-is it? :eek::confused:

My role model is Goldwater. Always has been.

I was just wondering which of the two is more admired on this forum.

Todd
03-27-2009, 12:00 PM
Ron Paul didn't appear out of a vacuum.

How about this: Who was a greater influence on Dr. Paul?

He talks about and quotes Taft more often than Goldwater IMO

JohnJay
03-27-2009, 12:08 PM
Ron Paul didn't appear out of a vacuum.

How about this: Who was a greater influence on Dr. Paul?

I believe that answer would be Taft -
from what RP has said

As RP has also said, (a Des Moines morning radio talk show before the Ames Straw poll in the summer of '07 comes to mind first)
a non-interventionist is different from an isolationist.
"If goods do not cross borders, soldiers will" - Frederic Bastiat
Isolationist is a trade situation, but a non-interventionist lets sovereign nations determine their own liberty. No Woodrow Wilson foreign interventionism.

Senator/Congresssman Taft's one of the few - if not only - from Congress that got a statue - just north of the Capitol on Constitution Ave.

Goldwater may have been an evolution of Taft as well, after Taft lost the nomination in 1952.

0zzy
03-27-2009, 12:10 PM
What did Taft do that you opposed?
What did Goldwater do that you opposed?

invisible
03-27-2009, 12:31 PM
Goldwater gets extra points not only for his neat promotional cans of "Gold Water" during his 1964 campaign (yes, I do actually have one), but also for being an amateur radio operator. I cherish my collection of old radio magazines that contain interviews with him. Probably the one I value the most highly is the October 1964 issue of 73 Magazine, with their "A Ham In The White House?" cover and cartoon feature. One of the cartoons pictures him in front of several microphones, with the caption "However, diplomatic relations will be restored immediately after the QSL card arrives in my office". Another pictures him talking to an astronaut with the caption "Once again...you should land at 0935...give me a call at 0940 on 7036 kc...then we'll try 20 at 0950 on 14.036...then on 15 at 1000 on 21.036...right on up through the bands...see you next Thursday...and don't forget to QSL". LMAO! Absolutely classic! I know there's at least one person here on RPF who would want to see it, perhaps I'll scan and post it (and maybe some of my other Goldwater items) if there's sufficient interest. I'm pretty sure that the radio magazine coverage is a side of Goldwater that most people here aren't aware of. Does anyone have any cool Taft memorabilia they are able to share?

travisAlbert
03-27-2009, 12:37 PM
Taft was also a "progressive", which Paul isn't. :cool: Goldwater wins this thread, IMHO. However, if you need someone to TELL you who your role model should be...it's not a very effective "movement"-is it? :eek::confused:


You are referring to President Taft. Congressman Taft was by no means a progressive. He sponsored some of the most damning legislation against unions ever created.

tremendoustie
03-27-2009, 02:00 PM
My role model is Goldwater. Always has been.

I was just wondering which of the two is more admired on this forum.


I would say both, but goldwater more than taft.

emazur
03-27-2009, 02:33 PM
I need to study up on both of them, but wasn't Goldwater's Achilles heal that he favored an interventionist "nuke the reds" foreign policy?
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=189
And in one essential area, the leftist charge was right. Goldwater enthusiastically championed the cold war, and many who might otherwise have been well disposed to him found frightening his apparent haste to bring nuclear weapons into play. Ironically, in foreign policy, Goldwater stood squarely within the liberal consensus, which was itself extreme. Mr. Perlstein shows that his "extremist" nuclear rhetoric merely echoed earlier remarks by Kennedy, Rockefeller, and other stalwarts of the cold war consensus. Had Goldwater returned to the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Old Right, he could have turned the campaign of fear against his accusers.

...

Unfortunately, Goldwater did not move from his defiance of standard nuclear doctrine to a call for a return to traditional diplomacy. Instead, he spoke constantly about the need for a "war of attrition" and denounced "surrender." His frequent reminders of the need to risk death in all-out war were hardly the customary rhetoric of the American right, at least in its pre-William Buckley days. Even Herbert Hoover found it "hard to disagree" with the feeling that Goldwater might get us into war (p. 348). Such inflammatory language, as we shall see, played into the hands of his leftist adversaries, although as Perlstein makes evident, Goldwater did little more here than echo mainstream cold warriors.

...

Indeed, foreign affairs were Goldwater's undoing during his race for the presidency.

tremendoustie
03-27-2009, 02:39 PM
I need to study up on both of them, but wasn't Goldwater's Achilles heal that he favored an interventionist "nuke the reds" foreign policy?
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=189
And in one essential area, the leftist charge was right. Goldwater enthusiastically championed the cold war, and many who might otherwise have been well disposed to him found frightening his apparent haste to bring nuclear weapons into play. Ironically, in foreign policy, Goldwater stood squarely within the liberal consensus, which was itself extreme. Mr. Perlstein shows that his "extremist" nuclear rhetoric merely echoed earlier remarks by Kennedy, Rockefeller, and other stalwarts of the cold war consensus. Had Goldwater returned to the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Old Right, he could have turned the campaign of fear against his accusers.

...

Unfortunately, Goldwater did not move from his defiance of standard nuclear doctrine to a call for a return to traditional diplomacy. Instead, he spoke constantly about the need for a "war of attrition" and denounced "surrender." His frequent reminders of the need to risk death in all-out war were hardly the customary rhetoric of the American right, at least in its pre-William Buckley days. Even Herbert Hoover found it "hard to disagree" with the feeling that Goldwater might get us into war (p. 348). Such inflammatory language, as we shall see, played into the hands of his leftist adversaries, although as Perlstein makes evident, Goldwater did little more here than echo mainstream cold warriors.

...

Indeed, foreign affairs were Goldwater's undoing during his race for the presidency.

Whoops, good point.