Republicans: Salesman for a Cause

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There'll be a

Hot time

In the old town

Tonight.

It almost seemed like a nominating convention. The organ roared; there were banners, signs and demonstrators. Then, as 1,800 Republicans cheered, clapped and whistled, Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater walked onstage at the Coronado Theater in Rockford, Ill. It had been a long day—he had whisked through an afternoon of interviews, toured four factories, exhorted G.O.P. contributors at lunch and dinner—but Goldwater still seemed completely fresh.

Stabbing the air with a forefinger, Goldwater lashed out at the tractors-for-prisoners negotiations with Castro: "The disgusting, sickening spectacle of four Americans groveling before a cheap, dirty dictator," he called it. Then his evocation of national pride struck home. "How sick do we have to get?" he cried. "How rotten can we be? How low can we sink as Americans before Americans rise up and say, 'Look—our heritage demands more than this; the memory of our men who have died fighting demands more than this.' " His spellbound audience exploded in a roar of applause.

The message to Rockford was typical —and so was the response. In 1961, Barry Morris Goldwater, 52, traveling tirelessly about the land to champion the cause of the Republican Party, U.S. conservatism and his own variety of rugged individualism, is the hottest political figure this side of Jack Kennedy.

Blunt Terms. Almost every day, it seems, Goldwater's baritone voice can be heard telling the nation what he thinks it should know. In the ballroom of Manhattan's Roosevelt Hotel early last week, he arose before 1,200 top New York businessmen to plead for a return to constitutional principles and a sound dollar. "I can't think of anything Mr. Khrushchev wants more than irresponsible fiscal policies such as we are under today—where we don't even know what the deficit will be next year." In recent weeks and months, and in blunt, unmistakable terms, Goldwater has charged that the U.S. faces a choice between free enterprise and big government, criticized the New Frontier as no better than an insipid copy of the New Deal, demanded that the U.S. begin a drive to win the cold war.

No Republican is more in demand.

Since March, Goldwater's Washington office has received more than 650 written invitations for the Senator to put in an appearance, plus hundreds of telephoned requests. Goldwater's mail runs to a remarkable 800 pieces a day. Goldwater's political credo, The Conscience of a Conservative—a warmed-over version of his old speeches—has sold 700,000 copies in little more than a year; the paperback edition is going into its twelfth printing. Goldwater's thrice-weekly column of comment (ghost-edited by Arizona's Republican State Chairman Stephen Shadegg) is syndicated in 104 papers.

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