Republican Conventions In 1964 And 2024
By John J. Duncan Jr.
A few days short of my 17th birthday in July of 1964, I rode a train for 77 hours to go to the Republican National Convention that nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater for president.
The convention was held in San Francisco, and I wanted to go by train because at that point in my life, I had not been anyplace west of Nashville.
I was an honorary assistant sergeant at arms, and I have told people since then that you can’t get any lower than being an honorary assistant, but it got me into the convention. It was a thrilling trip for me, and I felt lucky to be there.
I felt even more fortunate to still be alive and active and healthy enough to attend this latest Republican Convention 60 years later as a Tennessee delegate.
Susan Richardson Williams, the Knoxville businesswoman and television commentator, was also part of the Tennessee delegation. As far as we could determine, we were the only ones at the Milwaukee Convention who were also at the San Francisco meeting. Susan was a page at the ’64 convention.
This year’s convention was a great success and gave a real boost to the party going into the fall elections. There was a very wide variety of speakers, showing the great appeal Republicans have to all people – male or female, white or black, from every walk of life.
We will now be campaigning against the very unappealing Kamala Harris, and I will be doing everything I can to help re-elect President Trump.
I do think he would be wise to shorten his speeches. Most people thought he spoke too long at the convention – more than an hour and a half – and I read that he spoke for two hours at Grand Rapids in the first post-convention rally.
Edward Everett, who was the featured speaker at Gettysburg when Lincoln gave his great address, later wrote to Lincoln: “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself, that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
The Democrats have always falsely claimed they were for the working man, the middle class. Yet the big government they have brought about has primarily helped the big giants in every industry and hurt or destroyed many small businesses.
Knowing the great appeal of the acceptance speech by J. D. Vance at the recent convention, and the populist theme of many of the speakers, the Democrats in the media claimed they had never heard these things at Republican conventions in the past.
All that did was show how little the media of today knows about Republicans. As Ryan Girdusky wrote in his newsletter, the themes of Vance and other 2024 convention speakers were reminiscent of Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft and Pat Buchanan.
Liberals are the best friends big business has. Republicans have always been for small business and the little guy – power to the people, not big government bureaucrats.
As Girdusky, whom I have never met, wrote about me in a national news magazine in 2018: “Duncan belongs to a brand of conservatism that dates back to the Eisenhower era, one that regularly opposed both the military industrial complex and big business. He looked out for the interests of Main Street instead of Wall Street and voted to protect America’s liberty and security at home instead of traveling the world in search of monsters to destroy.”
While populist conservative themes have always been heard at Republican conventions, some of our leaders have become unpopular by not governing that way.
George W. Bush campaigned all over the country saying we should not be the policeman of the world and that we needed a “more humble foreign policy”. He said we should get out of the business of nation-building (of other nations).
However, when in office, he allowed himself to be controlled by Israel-First Neocons. While Donald Trump is strongly favorable to Israel, he did not have us in any war during his four years in the White House.
Big Government conservatives (if there is such a thing) have always been out of step and uncomfortable with the great majority of rank-and-file, small government Republicans.
Ordinary Republicans do not favor open borders with unlimited immigration, trade deals that harm American workers, and going to wars for other countries when there is no threat to our own country.
Donald Trump and J. D. Vance realize that socialism greatly expands the gap between the rich and the poor and want to bring this country back to its America-First roots.
Trump has said on Day One he will close the border, expand oil production to bring down gas prices, and end the electric car mandate that mainly helps China.
These things will not be easy, because he will have to fight an entrenched liberal bureaucracy to accomplish these very popular goals.
