You know, that was true, they claimed they thought Goldwater couldn’t win and was “too extreme”.
The GOP base was split in 1964, my grandfather always said that LBJ was unbeatable anyways because JFK’s death was too fresh and that Goldwater was “too Jewish”.
Probably true, and unfortunate, because JFK was very beatable.
Goldwater and Kennedy were friends from their days in the Senate. They had hatched a plan wehre they would spend part of the campaign doing a whistle-stop tour together. At the first stop, President Kennedy would come out and speak on an issue and Senator Goldwater would rebut him. They would reverse the order at each stop. Together, they could hve changed the face of American political campaigns. Instead, we got the LBJ smear machine and the little girl picking flowers.