well, I disagree with you on the punctuated equilibrium thing, but I thought Goldwater's concession speech was a good illustration of what you're talking about. WRT feminism, my mom always thought of it as a pendulum swinging back and forth in extremes. An apt metaphor, really. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth....
This was posted with a preface to say that portions of McCain's speech echoed Goldwater's: http://www.azcapitoltimes.com/story.cfm?id=9810
<quote> Q. Senator, shortly before you formally announced for the presidency, you said you hoped that if you ran you would not run so bad a race that it would hurt the conservative cause. Do you now think that you have hurt the conservative cause?
Goldwater: No, I don't feel that the conservative cause has been hurt; 25 million votes is a lot of votes and a lot of people dedicated to the concept of conservatism, I don't think it has been hurt.
Q. You said the cause you believe in is the one the Republican Party must cling to, and yet the size of your vote and the distribution of your loss in traditional Republican areas of the South - this is taken to mean a sizable defection, of course, and contributions to your repudiation by Republicans. The question is whether the Republican Party voters have not shared in repudiating this philosophy you say the party must cling to?
Goldwater: Well, unfortunately, I think you are right, that my defeat to some degree - although I wouldn't say a major degree - was occasioned by Republicans in this country who would not vote or work, I should say, for the top of the ticket. This is in direct contrast to times when conservatives did not win at the convention when we would go out and work our hearts out for the more liberal or moderate members of the party. But this is not a repudiation, this was announced - they announced this as soon as the convention was over, and I think they are entitled to do what they want. I don't think we can build a Republican Party on their concepts which, in my opinion, have no difference at all with the Democratic concepts.
Q. Senator, this is already being interpreted by other Republicans around the country as a crushing disaster not only because of the size of the Johnson vote, but because of the governors that went down, senatorial candidates lost and the loss of some 30 seats in the House. What is your feeling on that score?
Goldwater: Well, I haven't seen the totals on that end of it yet. I can't tell you how many governors have lost or won. I think if some governors and senators and some congressmen had more actively supported the ticket, they would have been better off. You cannot in this game of politics fight your own party. It just doesn't work. We made some good gains in the South in the Congress, which I think we would have made anyway. But we made them.
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