[Senator Goldwater]

"I don't know how you could be more conservative than Reagan unless you were a Nazi."

Nazi refers to totalitarian National Socialism, which was coined as fascism.

Conservatism was defined by Russell Kirk as "the negation of the secular ideologies", i.e. all the -isms of the 19th and 20th centuries: naziism, fascism, socialism, communism etc.

Any suggestion that "pure" conservatism equals nazism is an egregious smear and a blatant misread of political history.

[Jim W N]

Bad choice of words. Everything can be taken to excess, but I really meant “extreme right wing” more than “extreme conservatism.”