FYI, everyone should know that Barry Goldwater in 1975 and later was not a conservative. The Barry Goldwater in 1975 was not the same person as the Goldwater of 1964.
The Goldwater in his later years was a liberal, anti-gun, pro-government, pro-abortion, etc.
Regardless, this topic is not about Goldwater your comments about Goldwater are doubly doubtful. http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/barry.html
*“Barry Goldwater in his later years rejected the religious right and considered himself a liberal.”
"Barry Goldwater: Moderate or Liberal, but Definately No Longer a Conservative
September 17, 2006 — Ron Chusid
“The HBO documentary on Barry Goldwater which I previously noted airs tomorrow evening. His granddaughter, C.C. Goldwater, who made the documentary, has an article in Newsweek. It is always interesting to compare the views of Barry Goldwater, who considered himself a liberal in his later years,” *
Gee Susanann, we’ve missed your calm reasoned voice around here the past few weeks Take another look at post #10, wherein I referenced a bi-partisan plan to rescue the likes of Nixon. There were, at that time well-intentioned men of both parties who, while they may have disliked Nixon personally were big enough to put patriotism (real patriotism, not the phoney right-wing blather we hear today) ahead of partisanship. They felt it was important to protect the integrity of the presidency…of the office, not the occupant.
And with regard to the not-guilty vote of the Clinton-era senators, has it occurred to you that they may have been honestly convinced that Clinton had not committed an impeachable offense?
ETA no, I don’t suppose it has.
The facts are otherwise. Gurney and Goldwater were hardly “RINOs” (a stupid term, which assumed the Republican party has the ideological purity of the Russian Communist Part under Stalin) and they were on the record for voting for impeachment. The facts – as others have pointed out – was that Nixon could not have counted on more than 15 votes.
The issue was that Nixon was caught lying to cover up a crime. Republicans who supported him felt betrayed. They had spend years believing that Nixon knew nothing about Watergate, then discovered he was discussing a coverup a couple of days after it happened. He had made them look like fools and they were pissed.
And, like the facts say – he got 10 votes against impeachment when the matter was brought before the House Impeachment Committee, all Republicans. After the “smoking gun” tape, all ten of those Republicans said they would vote for impeachment when it came before the full house.
There were certainly some politics, but the record is clear that Nixon knew of a crime being committed – with his at least tacit approval – and used the power of the presidency to try to cover it up. He had broken the law, and he pissed off everyone who had believed him when he said he knew nothing about it.
Ironically, the only votes he would have gotten in the Senate would have been from Republicans who ignored the facts and voted solely on a party basis.
Goldwater was ALWAYS pro-choice. His wife Peggy founded the Arizona chapter of Planned Parenthood for crissakes! And speaking of CC, when her own mother became pregnant in 1955, her parents helped her obtain an abortion.
So it’s bullshit to say he only became “pro-abortion” later in life. :rolleyes:
You’re talking about people who think the Republican Party (and the United States) belongs to them. Only they get to decide who is entitled to get elected - and if the voters elect the wrong person, they feel they have the duty to “fix” it.
It takes 67 votes to convict for impeachment, and that only removes the office holder from office. Then a prosecutor must decide to criminally prosecute in the regular courts with the ordinary rules.
But I will agree entirely that both impeachments came down to Democrats vs. Republicans with the minor exceptions of the various members that crossed party lines that made it NOTHING OF THE SORT.
So aside from getting your facts more or less completely wrong, can we presume that you are reporting your opinions accurately? Or are your opinions wishy-washy like mine and subject to change whenever the facts change?
In the real world of 1974, many of the Democratic senators were paleolithic conservatives from the Deep South. To say that they were liberal or voted as a bloc is falsifying history.
Again, in reality, both parties had liberal, moderate, and conservative wings. The very concept of a RINO or a DINO would have made no sense to anyone of either party. This had been true for all of the 20th century.
The Civil Rights movement changed all that. The racist conservatism that had worked for the Democrats since the Civil War in the South withered. Republicans created the southern strategy under Nixon, although it took until Reagan’s presidency (Republicans picked up 5 Deep South Senate seats in 1980) to work its way down from the presidential level. The southern strategy was coded racism rather than explicit racism but the voting patterns that showed whites but not blacks switiching made it obvious that everyone knew what it meant.
There is no evidence that Nixon could have held on to the whole bloc of Republican votes. That’s why he resigned. Nothing whatsoever to do with RINOs, who DID NOT EXIST, and everything to do with his being exposed as a liar who covered-up his crimes.
If your point is that Republican Congressmen are evil and cynical brats you’ll find much agreement, but was it really your intent to insult a jury of 12 randomly chosen Americans?
The Democrats had 57 seats, not 61 (They had gone up to 56 seats during the 1972 election, and then, after the Saturday Night Massacre and the firing of Elliot Richardson, Sen. Saxby, a Republican, resigned to become Attorney General, being replaced by Democrat Howard Metzenbaum. So, the composition of the Senate was 57 Democrats, 43 Republicans, 1 Conservative (James Buckley, who usually voted with the Republicans), and 1 Independent (Harry Byrd, who caucused with the Democrats, but tended to vote with the Republicans on civil rights and budget issues.
So the Democrats needed ten Republican votes to convict, not six, and as I think I already mentioned, support for Nixon was vanishing across the Republican caucus. The Senate Republican leadership said that Nixon couldn’t count on Republican support, and even Bill Timmons (Nixon’s Assistant for Legislative Affairs), at his most optimistic, told Nixon he only had 20 votes. The opposition to Nixon by the end wasn’t just Democratic opposition. It was bipartisan. After the tapes were released, the Republican party ran from Nixon. Even Bush at the RNC was telling Nixon he didn’t have any support left. As he put it in his personal notes, Bush said he was in a “half-assed position, neither fish nor fowl”, and that “Watergate is a shabby, tawdry business that demeans the Presidency.”
Clinton was different though he lied, a lot of the politicians were sympathetic toward him in private. I wonder how many of them are cheating and were thinking “Gee that could’ve just have easily been me.”
So while the politicians had to condemn him in public, there was a lot of private sympathy for him.
And, btw, if Nixon hadn’t resigned, I think the Democrats would have gotten a lot more than 61 Senate seats and 242 House seats. As it was,the New Hampshire, Kansas, North Dakota, and Oklahoma Senate seats only stayed Republican by the slimmest of margins, and there were a bunch of House seats the Republican incumbents just barely managed to hold onto If the Watergate thing had dragged on through the elections, the Democrats would have been able to make even more of it than they did. The entire race would have become, “Should Nixon be impeached”, and the Republicans would have done even worse than they historically did.
Au contraire. Whether Goldwater was a hypocrite or truly conflicted until later in life, he leaned pro-life politically throughout the 1970s & into the early 1980s. Also, when did PP shift on abortion? It was not always the pro-choice/abortion group it became.
The Senate can also (by another 2/3rds majority) vote to prevent the former officeholder from ever holding a federal public office (appointed or elected) again.
No, actually, I’m talking about the current Republican party, which is quite similar to the Communists under Stalin in the way it insists on ideological purity and pursues their ideology even when it makes no sense whatsoever. But in a republic, we elect our representatives to make the best choices possible, not to follow ideology over a cliff.
Such a party structure didn’t exist in 1974. There were liberals, conservatives, and moderates in both parties. But Nixon’s impeachment cut across all those lines. He had obstructed justice, lied about it, and then betrayed his supporters, who went out on a limb and believed him and defended him.
Again, look at Edward Gurney. He voted against the Civil Rights Act, foreign aid, and the War on Poverty – clearly a conservative even by today’s standards. He defended Nixon furiously during the Watergate hearings. But once the “smoking gun” tape was released, he did an immediate turnabout and said he would vote for impeachment.
Your assumption is colored by how Congress works today. It was different back in 1974.
Isn’t it amazing that Susanann’s memory is so clear on every aspect of the world of the 1950s and 1960s that she can lecture us about the halcyon glories of those days, but when it comes to the behavior of the federal government suddenly she substitutes the Republican world of today instead? I hope she can explain this, because a cynic might be lead to believe that her other memories of her dearly beloved past might also betray a similar absolute lack of accuracy.
I was talking about people like Susanann, who feel they have the power to declare a Republican a RINO and who can talk about “taking back our country” and “the real America”.
They somehow feel that any part of America that doesn’t agree with them doesn’t count as part of America.
Take another look at post 
:smack: