If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

The remark is a sardonic defense of political hypocrisy and human frailty: Goldwater suggests that if personal vice were grounds for banishment, the machinery of government would collapse for lack of personnel. The line works by exaggeration—implying that womanizing and drinking are so common among political actors that enforcing strict moral standards would be impractical. It also reflects a hard-edged, unsentimental view of politics as a realm where private behavior and public function are often in tension. Read charitably, it critiques selective moral outrage and the gap between public virtue-signaling and private conduct; read critically, it can sound like an excuse for misconduct.