Goldwater/Johnson was a sympathy vote. Actually a misguided but strong charactered example of American reaction to attack.

What changed around the time of Nixon is the revival of identity politics which was brought about with Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs. Throughout most of the time between the Reconstruction and the Great Society political battles, while fierce, were fought over policy questions.

Nasty though it is to accept – voting Democrat is “natural” it is the path of least resistance.

After all voting Democrat is only doing what education (all levels of education – and including many private schools) points someone into doing – and what the msm (including the entertainment media) back also.

So to NOT vote Democrat is to not follow the default option – it requires some (perhaps not a huge amount, but some) INDEPENDENT THOUGHT.

And the trouble with people who think (rather than just conform) is that they can not be taken for granted.

The “anti left” in the United States are like a “hurd of cats” they go off in all directions and are made up of people with very different opinions on many things.

So they may not vote at all unless inspired – and there must be a message that will resound with the enough of them to win.

What message is this?

My view is that it as follows:

Role back the state in terms of government spending, taxes and regulations – economic libertarianism (or a least a move to some extent in that direction).

Social conservativism (i.e. rejection of the P.C. ideolgy that the is the heart of leftist “idenity politics”) but NOT using the state to try and restore conservative social values.

Using the state to try and restore conservative social values alienates independent voters – and DOES NOT WORK ANYWAY.

And (finally) strong national defence – including securing the borders (sorry Independent Institute and so on).

But NOT wars with no clear objectives thousands of miles away.

If someone orders an attack upon Americans – then find them, kill them (slaugher all involved with the full force of the United States, no military hands tied and no one left alive to seek revenge), and then BRING THE TROOPS HOME.

No “nation building” or other B.S.

If the three basic principles above (roll back the state economically an end to the Welfare State, end P.C. attacks on conservative social values – but do not try and use the state to restore conservative social values, and strong national defence including border security – but no endless overseas wars) are followed, then elections can be won.

And the United States (the nation without which the rest of the West can not stand) can be saved from bankruptcy.

This terrible event will not really help Barack Obama.

Certainly he may use it to keep the ban on off shore drilling (no one even mentions the oil shale in the mountain States that could be used without any risk to fishing or sea coasts – still at least Alberta is not a State of the United States, so they will go into using oil shale).

But this will not help Obama politically – and the economic crash is comming (it will come before November 2012).

The only thing that can save him is “violence from the right” which is why we must keep a watch out.

Either for a real conservative or libertarian who follows the path of violence (without understanding that such methods will only HELP the Comrades) or for a FAKE operation. Not fake violence – but a fake “right”.

The left have used such methods many times over the last century (in many countries) – sometimes whole “false flag” organizations have been set up.

The message is simple:

The person who uses violence serves the Comrades – he either does so unintentionally (out of error) or he does so deliberately (because he is one of them – or is a weak minded person controlled by them).

This must be banged home – again and again.

Disagree – the big 20th century shift to the far left among Democrats was with FDR in the 30s, not JFK in the 60s. Surely the post-watergate data has more to do with the coming of age of post-world war two children… i.e. children who could not remember an America without big government.

It seems a fair question. If the US people really want limited government types in charge, why did Goldwater go down to defeat so badly in 1964? (Johnson got 43.1 million votes, Goldwater 27.2 million).

This was before my time. But two things jump out from the pages of the history books.

First, the assassination of President Kennedy made that 1964 election unique. Perhaps a lot of people cast a sympathy vote for Johnston as JFK’s heir. Certainly, we have to go all the way to Clinton in 1992 before a Democrat got more votes than Johnston in 1964 — and the US population had grown substantially over those intervening 28 years.

Second, 1964 was before Johnson had had the opportunity to put his poisonous “Great Society” programs on the books. The Democrats were at that time still an American Party, not tea-sipping internationalists.

Johnston was the heir to a John Kennedy who had actually fought in the US armed forces. Kennedy’s Democrats had cut taxes. They had proudly built nuclear weapons, and, in the Cuban Crisis, convinced the USSR that they might even use them. JFK had launched Americans on the path to the Moon, with crews of white American males selected only on the basis of ability; not a single token handicapped Palestinian lesbian single mother amongst those astronauts.

Bottom line, I could imagine many Tea-Partiers supporting a JFK today (or even casting a supportive vote for JFK’s tragic heir). But I can’t imagine a JFK getting the Democrat nomination today.

Somewhere in the late 60s & 1970s, the Democrats (or at least Democrat elites) changed direction and became the far-left, big-government, financially-profligate, anti-American milksops of today. Why?

Alisa, most current voters could not tell you who Goldwater was, or why he mattered. The past is another country, etc.

A lot happened in the late 60s/early 70s. Democrats in Congress abandoned the Vietnamese. Watergate, of course. The start of the left’s Long March through the educational system. The beginning of Affirmative Action (good), and its perversion into racist quotas (bad). The Oil Shocks. Worst of all, the music died — the end of good popular music.

I have no idea how the causal loops are interconnected. Only that the facts of actual votes cast in Presidential elections suggest the particular Democrat candidate has had no significant impact on number of votes received in about 30 years. Whereas the particular Republican candidate has had a big impact (tens of millions of votes).

This seems hugely important, and yet it has been totally ignored.

My simplistic interpretation is that, since the Baby Boomers arrived on the scene, voting Democrat for President is a statement by the voter about himself. That’s all. There is a smaller number of reflex Republican voters. Elections are decided by the large number of Contingent Voters, who might vote for a Republican but will never vote for a Democrat. Contingent Voters seem to see government as the problem, not the solution.

But my simplistic interpretation could certainly be wrong.

I had lunch with my co-workers today, and they are a basically conservative lot, but not terribly fascinated with day to day partisan politics. The general take in a room of ten people was that this is an environmental disaster that may take a year to clean up, and that the hard-won victory of getting Obama to agree to allow off-shore drilling has been swept away with one event. Everyone naturally assumes that energy costs will rise as a result, and that there is nothing that can be done about it.

The media are controlling the conversation, and we will see in the next couple of days which way the spin goes. I dont think it will be sufficient to argue that the amount of oil spilling into the region is insignificant compared to the risks entailed by bringing it in with tankers. Frankly, I think the people who favor drilling have just lost the argument, period.