RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Wow, Bush is just evil now, there's no doubt.

By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's libertarian views on personal issues were revealed, which he believed were an integral part of true conservativism. Goldwater viewed abortion as a matter of personal choice, not intended for government intervention.

As a passionate defender of personal liberty, he saw the religious right's views as an encroachment on personal privacy and individual liberties. In his 1980 Senate reelection campaign, Goldwater won support from religious conservatives but in his final term voted consistently to uphold legalized abortion and, in 1981, gave a speech on how he was angry about the bullying of American politicians by religious organizations, and would "fight them every step of the way".[14] Goldwater also disagreed with the Reagan administration on certain aspects of foreign policy (e.g. he opposed the decision to mine Nicaraguan harbors). Notwithstanding his prior differences with Dwight Eisenhower, Goldwater in a 1986 interview rated him the best of the seven Presidents with whom he had worked.

After his retirement in 1987, Goldwater described the conservative Arizona Governor Evan Mecham as “hardheaded” and called on him to resign, and two years later stated that the Republican Party had been taken over by a “bunch of kooks.” In a 1994 interview with the Washington Post the retired senator said,



In response to Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell's opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, “Every good Christian should be concerned,” Goldwater retorted: “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”[15] Goldwater also had harsh words for his onetime political protege, President Reagan, particularly after the Iran-Contra Affair became public in 1986. Journalist Robert MacNeil, a friend of Goldwater's from the 1964 Presidential campaign, recalled interviewing him in his office shortly afterward. "He was sitting in his office with his hands on his cane...and he said to me, 'Well, aren't you going to ask me about the Iran arms sales?' It had just been announced that the Reagan administration had sold arms to Iran. And I said, 'Well, if I asked you, what would you say?' He said, 'I'd say it's the goddamn stupidest foreign policy blunder this country's ever made!'"[16] Also, in 1988 during that year's presidential campaign, he pointedly told vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle at a campaign event in Arizona "I want you to go back and tell George Bush to start talking about the issues." [4]

Some of Goldwater's statements in the 1990s aggravated many social conservatives. He endorsed Democrat Karan English in an Arizona congressional race, urged Republicans to lay off Clinton over the Whitewater scandal, and criticized the military's ban on homosexuals: “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.”[17] He also said, “You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.” A few years before his death he went so far as to address the right wing, "Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican Party much more than the Democrats have."[18]

In 1996 he told Bob Dole, whose own presidential campaign received lukewarm support from conservative Republicans: “We're the new liberals of the Republican Party. Can you imagine that?” In that same year, with Senator Dennis DeConcini, Goldwater endorsed an Arizona initiative to legalize medical marijuana against the will of social conservatives.[19]

Musician Virtuopath[20] dedicated a song to Goldwater called, Au H2O. The song also makes a reference to libertarian Ron Paul, who is endorsed by Barry Goldwater, Jr. in the 2008 Presidential Election.

Barry Goldwater