Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

by Rick Perlstein

marked “ADDRESS UNKNOWN.” Meanwhile the Republicans kept losing. Liberals said it was because the congressional Old Guard scared the majority of voters, who liked the New Deal, and they quoted Al Smith: “No one shoots Santa Claus.” Conservatives, meanwhile, said that Republican presidential candidates lost because millions of disgusted heartlanders stayed home rather than vote for so unnatural a beast as the “me-too Republican.” The distrust reached a peak at the 1952 Republican National Convention. On its eve, Taft controlled enough delegates to win. Tom Dewey, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Herbert Brownell—the “Wrecking Crew of ’52” to conservatives—who had manufactured the candidacy of General Eisenhower (who entered the race out of fear that isolationism would gain sway in the country) rammed through a phony “fair play” resolution that let them uncredential a number of key Southern Taft delegations. Taft’s loyal army entered the hall singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and left decrying the steal of the century. With Ike’s retirement and Nixon’s razor-thin loss in 1960 just behind them, the old feuds festered worse than ever. “The Republican Party is just a little bit pregnant with New Dealism,” Senator Jenner told Indiana convention delegates in 1960, “and you ladies know you can’t be just a little bit pregnant.”