Republicans: The New Thrust, Barry Goldwater

If it was not a new Republican Party that emerged from San Francisco's Cow Palace last week, it was at least a much different one. It spoke with the accents of small-town America. Its muscle came no longer from the moneyed influential East, but from the South and the West with their oil and aerospace industries. And, remarkably, although the party is predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, it chose as its candidates Barry Morris Goldwater, 55, who is half-Jewish, and William E. Miller, 50, who is a Roman Catholic.

Deep Disquiet. Goldwater won the presidential nomination by arduously cultivating support at the precinct and county levels. By the time the convention got started last week, his hard work had already paid off, and he had more than enough delegates to assure him of a first-ballot nomination.

What helped clinch it for Goldwater was the fact that a strong conservative tide was running in the U.S., fed by a deep disquiet at the grass roots over the role of an ever-expanding Government. Goldwater and the tide came to gether, and the one could not have succeeded without the other. Between them, they submerged the moderate wing of the G.O.P.

In Goldwater, the Republican Party's conservatives have the choice that they have been demanding for a generation. With Lyndon Johnson straddling the middle road, Barry was in fact about the only leading Republican capable of offering such a choice. And his acceptance speech, vintage Goldwater in its demand for domestic conservatism and a firm foreign policy, indicated that this year the choice would be quite clear-cut.

Goldwater called for fiscal responsibility to maintain a suitable climate for a free economy. He called for individual freedom to help insure the fulfillment of the "whole man." He attacked the Democrats for using too much governmental power at home and too little abroad in the struggle with Communism. The goal of the U.S., he said, was "to flourish as the land of the free, not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of Communism." In a phrase reminiscent of Wendell Willkie's acceptance speech in 1940, he cried: "Only the strong can remain free; only the strong can keep the peace."-

Switchblade Issue. Goldwater also turned to a couple of issues that had preoccupied the convention throughout the week. One was the so-called "switchblade issue," first introduced at the convention when Dwight Eisenhower voiced his concern over crime in the cities. It was an issue that obviously touched nerve ends among the delegates. It makes sense as a national issue only if considered in conjunction with the "white backlash." Goldwater seized on it, warning of "the growing menace" to life and property in America's big cities and demanding governmental action.