David McElroy

During the 1964 presidential campaign, an actor named Ronald Reagan got seriously involved in politics for the first time by endorsing Republican Barry Goldwater. Nobody knew then that Reagan would be elected himself just 16 years later.

The ’64 campaign was a polarizing one, because Goldwater and his supporters were the hard-core, rabid conservatives. They beat back moderate elements of the GOP to win the nomination. Goldwater talked about liberty and cutting the size of government. He even suggested making Social Security voluntary. His campaign slogan was, “In your heart, you know he’s right.” His Democratic opponent, President Lyndon Johnson, painted Goldwater as an extremist, mocking him with, “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” Johnson also hit Goldwater with one of the earliest television attack ads.

The election was a disaster for Goldwater. He carried only six states. But his campaign was the beginning of a growing conservative movement that would expand and organize itself into something capable of completely taking over the Republican Party and propelling Reagan to the White House in 1980. The Goldwater campaign was the first part of the long process of switching the Solid South from Democrat to Republican. So much of what became the so-called Reagan Revolution never could have happened if the Goldwater campaign hadn’t happened in 1964.

I’ve been thinking about Goldwater and Reagan because I’m trying to project what effect Ron Paul is eventually going to have on the Republican Party or on U.S. politics. Only the most stubborn Paul supporter could possibly still claim that he has any chance of winning the nomination this year, much less being elected president, but it’s clear he’s energized a group of rabid, hard-core libertarians. At the polls, he’s going to lose badly. But will his influence come far down the road, as was the case for Goldwater?

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It’s been 17 years since cartoonist Gary Larson ended his comic strip, “The Far Side,” but it’s still one of the funniest comics ever drawn, as far as I’m concerned. We’re taking a look this week at a few of the many laughs from a man with a bizarrely wonderful sense of twisted humor.

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When a five-star general warns you about the dangers of a growing military, it’s probably a good idea to listen. In President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation more than 50 years ago, he gave a stark warning. After all these years, it’s clear that few people paid attention.

We have a military that’s far too big for what’s needed to defend the United States. We have  military personnel spread all over the world. We make commitments to defend other countries and base our military in them. All of this comes at a tremendous cost to the American taxpayer. What’s just as bad is that having a powerful military creates the urge to use it, so it leads us into wars that are costly in dollars and in the lives of people around the world.

If Democrats and Republicans don’t come to a budget deal, the military is going to face $600 billion in cuts over the next 10 years. (It’s important to remember that it’s not all at once. Frankly, those cuts will almost certainly never happen.)

But the leaders of the military are in a panic. For instance, on Wednesday, the Army’s chief of staff said those threatened cuts “would cause a hollowness — a significant hollowness in the force.” Military leaders have been lobbying Congress to do pretty much anything to stop those cuts. They’re united in telling us that they don’t have enough money and that they can’t spare a nickel.

At the same time the military is saying it can’t afford to cut its spending, I observed something that suggests otherwise. It’s just a small example, but it’s indicative of a culture in which spending money isn’t a big deal — because there’s always more where that came from.

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