Posted on 07/24/2014 11:05:46 AM PDT by cotton1706
July, 1964. Fifty years ago this month. The Republican Party nominates Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater for president. The resulting uproar was somewhere north of hysteria. And that was just from the GOP establishment of the day. Followed famously by a November landslide Goldwater “defeat” in which the Arizonan carried a mere five states in his race against Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.
Goldwater was the first conservative Republican to win nomination since the 1924 selection of Calvin Coolidge (the vice president who had succeeded Warren Harding after his death). From 1928 all the way through 1960, every GOP nominee from Hoover to Nixon was drawn from the progressive/moderate wing of the party.
In the battle for the 1964 nomination Goldwater was pilloried by prominent members of his own party — including liberal GOP governors Nelson Rockefeller (N.Y.), William Scranton (Pa.), and George Romney (Mich.). Goldwater accused liberal Republicans of supporting a “dime store New Deal” — liberalism on the cheap. Goldwater in turn was accused of being an extremist, anti-Social Security, anti-federal aid to education, and anti-civil rights — the latter charge a particular slur against a founder of the Arizona NAACP who had helped integrate Phoenix schools. When it came to foreign policy he was said to be flat-out dangerous, a man who believed the United States shouldn’t co-exist peacefully with the Soviet Union, but rather win the Cold War outright. And this was before he faced off with LBJ, whose campaign simply picked up the themes of Goldwater’s intra-party rivals and drove them home.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Good catch. Goldwater was being stabbed from the front and back.
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Barry Goldwater
And Rockefeller TRASHED Goldwater at his own convention, leading to fist fights in the aisles of the Cow Palace...and in the lobby...and the street out front.
Saw some of it on the news as a kid...very brief local coverage.
Conservatives had to fight (literally) for the soul of the GOP.
Sadly now they have ceded it without little more than a whimper.
Leave it there I want see how much you get that Bender go for it
It was Eugene McCarthy who replied it must’ve been a light rinse.
” I still have my elephant pin with Goldwater glasses.”
I still have my pin, too, my buttons and my big red sign that my little kids and I carried around the precinct in Texas. The “In your heart you know he’s right” sign. I worked for that man all year - January when he announced to Nov. when we had the wake. Watched the whole 4 day convention on TV (it was 106 outside the whole week, and I kept plopping all my little kids into a bathtub of cold water while I watched the pure evil of Rockefeller, Scranton and Romney, but also Goldwater’s legendary speech. It was an exciting year, with a horrible finish. Goldwater was my first vote (too young by a few months in 1960) and Reagan was my daughter’s first vote. So we at least had good beginnings (and disgusting follow-ups).
Oh, that we all might have that kind of beginning just once more.
No. He didn't endorse or support either candidate.
He also didn't walk out of the convention.
Wow he really DOES look like Ted Knight!
Wasn’t the Daisy ad produced by Bill Moyers?
Nowadays, we speak of every election as a "watershed" election.
But the 1964 election really was a "watershed" election.
Where we could've gotten a reversal of direction, toward more limited government, we got "The Great Society" and the "War on Poverty".
Where we could've gotten a privatized social security, we got a merger of the General Fund and the Social Security Trust Fund.
Where we could've gotten a national security policy based on a strong defense and a commitment to winning wars that we chose to fight, we got Viet Nam. <
The differences between a Goldwater administration that never was and a Johnson administration that was all too real were legitimately immense.
boop, not only do you show a complete lack of respect to a very great man... 
but you show you really are a schmuck I would like to meet in a dark alley!
I remember billboards with that picture of the great Barry AuH2O a couple years after loosing to LBJ with the words “Now you know he was right”. Johnson’s campaign ran that famous attack ad of the little girl in the field of daises with the mushroom cloud in the background nonstop on TV. As I recall, they added the snarky comment “in your gut you know he’s nuts” just for good measure. MFers.
Gold ol Barry!
There was an episode that featured that joke.
Don't hate me because I'm beautiful! :)
I was only fourteen at the time, but it seem every time his name was mentioned, it was either insinuated or publicly uttered that he was crazy and irresponsible. They especially ridiculed his famous statement from the convention about extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. In the wake of Kennedy's assassination and all the vile media coverage, he never stood a chance. But how much better off we'd be he were elected.
At the time one of my sisters was a Goldwater girl, and I was a loyal Dem sheep just like my parents. Now that sister is a fanatic lib while I’m the conservative black sheep of the family.
They claim they only ran the daisy ad one day before it was taken off the air due to protests, but it seems like I saw it more than one day. Nevertheless, it made a huge impression on a gullible public. But even if it ran only one day, there was so much other anti-Goldwater propaganda spewing out from the usual sources that one ad was just a tiny pct. of all the negative, hateful propaganda Goldwater received.
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