Barry Goldwater

* I was rather puzzled by George F. Will’s tribute, “Goldwater Lost the Race, Won the Future” (Column Right, March 27), in which he credits Barry Goldwater’s conservative reorientation of the GOP in 1964 with leading to victories in five of the next six presidential elections. I agree that Goldwater started the Republicans on a conservative track, but by the time we got Ronald Reagan, the principles of conservatism in the GOP had been hijacked by the so-called Moral Majority. This evangelical element, which has been the galvanizing force in the GOP for the past decade, bears little resemblance to a principled Goldwater-style conservatism. Will parenthetically notes Goldwater’s views which place him at odds with the GOP party line (pro-choice on abortion, for gays in the military), yet he fails to see the fundamental philosophical difference. Goldwater believes that government should generally stay out of private citizens’ lives; the Republican Party, which favors outlawing abortion and restoring school prayer, does not.

Will also credits Goldwater’s 1964 loss to Lyndon B. Johnson for inadvertently aiding conservatism by giving the Democrats enough rope to discredit themselves. That was before my time, but I saw a similar self-destruction in the 1992 Republican convention. The unbridled ascendancy of religious extremists in the Republican Party drove decent Americans away from the GOP like never before, sealing Bill Clinton’s victory.

To link Barry Goldwater to the GOP that brought us Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and the 1992 Republican convention does an extreme disservice to a man of great conviction and principle.

THOMAS R. CHATT

Redondo Beach