What Rick Santorum could learn from Barry Goldwater’s loss

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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Rick Santorum’s comments about the “dangers of contraception in this country” generated much debate yesterday.

The DC Examiner’s Philip Klein hit on the libertarian objections, noting “there’s a reason why no president has talked about these things — because the president has absolutely no business lecturing Americans about their sex lives.” While I obliquely made the same point yesterday, my column focused primarily on the political consequences of Santorum’s unexpurgated contraception comments.

This, of course, also proved controversial, leading one observer to sum up my position this way: “In short, it’s O.K. to be a Catholic presidential candidate as long as you’re quiet about it.” Clearly, I failed to persuade everyone.

Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute, frequently gives a lecture called “The Real Nature of Politics and Elections,” in which he shares mistakes he and other conservative activists made during the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign — mistakes which they had fixed by 1980.

Here is an excerpt that I think might be appropriate to the Santorum discussion:

… we Goldwater supporters tended to believe that being right, in the sense of being correct, was sufficient to win.

We firmly believed that if we could prove we were right, if we could logically demonstrate that our candidate was of higher character and that his policies would be better for our country, somehow victory would fall to our deserving hands like a ripe fruit off of a tree.

That’s not the real nature of politics.  I call that misconception the Sir Galahad theory:  “I will win because my heart is pure.”

Do you know what was the most used slogan of the Goldwater campaign?  It was this:  “In your heart, you know he’s right.”

Unfortunately the real world doesn’t work that way, as we who supported Goldwater found out when Lyndon Johnson trounced us.  Johnson got 41 million votes and Goldwater got 27 million votes.

Philosophy aside, Santorum is stylistically hewing closer to the Goldwater model than to the Reagan model. He clearly believes in the Sir Galahad theory of politics — that being right is enough to win. To be sure, effective politicians can and must be educators. Thatcher’s maxim that, “First you win the argument, then you win the vote,” is among my favorites.

But it’s also true that presidential candidates simply must spend their time advancing the issues they have overtly and strategically decided to focus on. That’s called “staying on message.” Santorum’s willingness — no insistence — on stopping to kick every barking dog is a pernicious impulse.

Goldwater, of course, is still beloved by conservatives for his blunt style and willingness to always speak his mind.

But don’t forget, he lost in a landslide.

Matt K. Lewis