Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape
296 pages, 6 x 9
Hardcover
Release Date:28 Feb 2013
ISBN:9780816521098
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Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape

The University of Arizona Press
Nearly four million Americans worked on Barry Goldwater’s behalf in the presidential election of 1964. These citizens were as dedicated to their cause as those who fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. Arguably, the conservative agenda that began with Goldwater has had effects on American politics and society as profound and far reaching as the liberalism of the 1960s. According to the essays in this volume, it’s high time for a reconsideration of Barry Goldwater’s legacy.

Since Goldwater’s death in 1998, politicians, pundits, and academics have been assessing his achievements and his shortcomings. The twelve essays in this volume thoroughly examine the life, times, and impact of “Mr. Conservative.” Scrutinizing the transformation of a Phoenix department store owner into a politician, de facto political philosopher, and five-time US senator, contributors highlight the importance of power, showcasing the relationship between the nascent conservative movement’s cadre of elite businessmen, newsmen, and intellectuals and their followers at the grassroots—or sagebrush—level.

Goldwater, who was born in the Arizona Territory in 1909, was deeply influenced by his Western upbringing. With his appearance on the national stage in 1964, he not only articulated a new brand of conservatism but gave a voice to many Americans who were not enamored with the social and political changes of the era. He may have lost the battle for the presidency, but he energized a coalition of journalists, publishers, women’s groups, and Southerners to band together in a movement that reshaped the nation.
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer is an assistant professor of history at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics, co-editor of The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination, and a regular contributor to Bloomberg View’s economic history blog, Echoes.
Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Goldwater's Arizona and Arizona's Goldwater
1 The Conscience of a Conservationist: Barry Goldwater and the Colorado River
Andrew Needham
2 Drafting a Movement: Barry Goldwater and the Rebirth of the Arizona Republican Party
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
3 Southwestern Strategy: Mexican Americans and Republican Politics in the Arizona Borderlands
Micaela Anne Larkin
Part II. The Goldwater Moment
4 Getting to Goldwater: Robert A. Taft, William F. Knowland,and the Rightward Drift of the Republican Party
Michael Bowen
5 The Dealers and the Darling: Conservative Media and the Candidacy of Barry Goldwater
Nicole Hemmer
6 Goldwater in Dixie: Race, Region, and theRise of the Right
Joseph Crespino
7 Goldwater's "Moral Mothers": Miscalculations of Genderin the 1964 Republican Presidential Campaign
Michelle Nickerson
Part III. Beyond 1964 and Goldwater Conservatism
8 Phoenix's Cowboy Conservatives in Washington
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
9 Green Goldwater: Barry Goldwater, Federal Environmentalism, and the Transformation of Modern Conservatism
Brian Allen Drake
10 Time Is an Elusive Companion: Jesse Helms, Barry Goldwater, and the Dynamic of Modern Conservatism
William A. Link
Afterword: Barry Goldwater in History and Memory
Robert Alan Goldberg
About the Contributors
Index
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