I'll give this Goldwater the benefit of the doubt and say that he isn't racist either. At least for now.Goldwater threw down the gauntlet on immigration in his otherwise dull announcement speech a couple of weeks ago.
"In an outrageous abuse of power, our governor has chosen to ignore the will of the people by refusing to enact all provisions of the new law," Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, said in his prepared speech. Asked for details later, he said provisions to require identification to cast a ballot have yet to be implemented. [Gov. Janet] Napolitano has said that's because she's following the advice of Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard. Goldwater noted the other half of Proposition 200 denies state and local benefits to people living here illegally. "My first full week in office," he said, "I will transmit policy directives to all state agencies for the training of state personnel on how to fully implement Proposition 200."It was this that led Simcox, as well as many others on the far right, to be excited by the otherwise colorless Goldwater.(Something I always find interesting: The supporters of Proposition 200 would say that it only applied to welfare benefits and not other state services. Many Arizonans want such benefits to only go to people here legally, so they bought the argument and it passed. Then, the Governor and Attorney General say, "It only applies to welfare benefits" and the supporters scream: "No! It's supposed to apply to other state services!")
As we all recall, the entire Republican establishment came out against the anti-immigrant Proposition 200 last year. Even Sen. Jon Kyl, who couldn't find a way to condemn lynching decades after the fact, was against it. They found it racist and divisive back then. Now, their leading candidate for governor is mad because the Governor won't enforce it the way he wants. If it was racist and divisive last year, what makes this year so different?
Simcox says that his endorsement is as a single private citizen, and does not represent the endorsement of the Arizona Minutemen. I'm sure that Goldwater wants to keep up this pretention, since he probably isn't the least bit interested in being affiliated with some of the racists and head cases in the organization. However, it is difficult to imagine that Simcox did this without the at least the implied assent of the members of the group.
Sometime next week, expect someone like Steve Gallardo or Raúl Grijalva to call for Goldwater to disavow the endorsement. Expect Goldwater to give no response whatsoever. This what Republicans feel like they have to do all too often.
I will make no guess as to how much of the Republican base is mouth breathing racist neanderthals. I doubt that it is as big as the fantasies of some of the people on my side of the aisle. It is big enough, or at least the Republicans perceive it as big enough, that they are afraid of alienating them. Goldwater doesn't agree with the racist members of the Minutemen, but he needs to give them a wink and a nod, and for now they are happy with this.
We all have a couple of caricatures of a racist: the knuckle dragging, tabacky spitting moron or maybe the meth addicted skinhead. These types are such imbeciles its hard to think that they even could know better. Then you get so-called "leaders" who are so afraid of angering these folks that despite the fact that they know better, they pander to the worst in our society so that they can move other parts of their agenda. When you are educated, know better and still accomodate these attitudes, it's worse than being a racist.
This is the sort of game that Don Goldwater (whose family had to put up with the genteel anti-semitism prevalent in Phoenix a few decades ago) is playing. Its the sort of game that Jon Kyl played when he didn't want to go on record with an apology for lynching. Something that they might want to remember: even George Wallace got to a point when he couldn't sleep at night.
NB- A version of this also appeared on my blog, Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.