ained that the Republican Party must distance itself from the minimal- government conservative principles that had arisen during the Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge eras. He claims that these core concepts had served their purposes and should no longer be embraced by Republicans

in the primary race, that there was any attempt to be conciliatory to Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign by the Republican powers that were. Even Barry Goldwater, whose career owed so much to Ronald Reagan, was cool at best to a Reagan presidency. | remember one post-Bush-defeat meeting of our committee when

e United States to be “a Christian nation...based on the absolutes of the Bible.” The leader of the group (characterized by the late Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater as a “bunch of kooks”) wrote to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the United States Supreme Court asking her to support their efforts. “Republicans are