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 ...
They did. And you did.
The "Daisy" ad was aired only once...as a paid ad. On September 7, 1964 (NBC Monday Night at the Movies, David & Bathsheba).
A great hue and cry followed and the DNC cancelled any further exposure of the ad.
However, the networks decided that the ad -- and the response to it -- was newsworthy in and of itself. As a consequence, they ran it interminably on news & analysis shows for the next month.
By the end of September, over 95% of America had seen the ad an average of 4.2 times. It is not known, for sure, whether this process had been pre-agreed to by the DNC and the networks -- but nobody would be shocked if it had.
We really thought he would beat LBJ!
Those were the good old days for sure!
But when the prospect of the election of a candidate like Goldwater who would try to shake the politicians out of their love for increasingly, large government, the libs all banded together to destroy him, Goldwater.
Was it Gene McCarthy who said that? Thanks!
Barry Goldwater never needed vindication, IMHO.
Kick his ass Bendy!
Do you remember the follow-up billboard ads from the GOP in ~1966 with the photo of Goldwater and the words “now you know he was right”? I saw them north of Chicago from the bus on my way to Army reserve summer training camp at Fort McCoy, WI. I do not recall the media picking up on those bulletin board ads while LBJ was losing his war in VN.
Yes. That...and the line "They said if I voted for Goldwater, we'd end up in a full-blown war in Viet Nam inside of six months. Sure enough, I did and we were."
I knew this thread sounded familiar ...
Barry Goldwater Against Big Government (1964) - Classic Campaign Ad: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2905627/posts
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