Politics & Power Quote by Phil Crane

Goldwater and Reagan are doing double duty here: not just as conservative icons, but as proof that conviction can be marketed as character. Phil Crane isn’t merely praising their politics; he’s elevating a style of politics in which certainty becomes a civic virtue, even when it loses elections or polarizes the room. The key move is the conditional: “even if people disagreed with them.” That phrase tries to launder partisanship into something like nobility, suggesting that admiration is available across ideological lines as long as the speaker projects unwavering commitment.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the mushy middle and the transactional legislator. Crane came of age in a Republican Party reshaped by Goldwater’s insurgent ideological clarity and Reagan’s optimistic, camera-ready storytelling. In that lineage, “strong commitments” are less about the details of policy than about signaling backbone: you pick a side, you stay picked, you become legible to voters. It’s a defense of ideological branding before “branding” became the default language for it.

Context matters: Goldwater’s 1964 campaign was a landslide defeat that still functioned as a seedbed for movement conservatism; Reagan’s ascent turned that movement into governing power. Crane’s compliment implies that losing can be strategically productive if it draws clean lines and builds a long-term coalition.

There’s also a revealing assumption: that admiration follows conviction. In practice, strong commitments can read as integrity to supporters and as inflexibility to everyone else. Crane is betting that the cultural prestige of “principled” politics outweighs the costs of compromise, a wager that helped define modern American polarization long before it became a punchline.