"I don't have any respect for the Religious Right. There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics. That goes for Falwell, Robertson and all the rest of these political preachers. They are a detriment to the country."
"A lot of so-called conservatives don't know what the word means. They think I've turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right."
He was wrong about the following:
"If they succeed in establishing religion as a basic Republican Party tenet," he told U.S. News & World Report in 1994, "they could do us in." "When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."
Without the evangelicals, the Pubbies have no majority so why spit on them?
He sounds anti Christian in those quotes.
Because he's more liberterian than most of the Republican party as we know it today. He eschewed the religious right--he was far more secular in his conservatism. He believed in getting the government out of the bedroom, and out of our individual lives, and fighting communism. It wasn't a metamorphosis to liberalism with age. His positions were forever consistent. When he ran in 64, abortion was not a major political issue as it was just even ten years later. He believed it was up to the pregnant woman as an individual, and at most the purview of the states to act on to restrict or permit.
Though individuals in the party who are evangelicals are indispensable to the conservative movement, I too think it was a big mistake for us to be completely captive to the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority. In a way it is not much different than the Democratic party being captive to Americans for Democratic Action and MoveOn.org.
There was action behind Goldwater's talk, In international affairs and on the homefront.
These quotes are from the jaded Goldwater of the 1990's, who was no longer the courageous activist of the 1950's and 1960's.
Goldwater certainly wasn't always right. My primary support of him was for his vision of foreign policy and defeat of the Soviets.