“He is not a Republican. He is a Libertarian.”
The same could have been said of Barry Goldwater. I admired and supported many of his positions, but he was a disaster from the standpoint of the Republican Party. It may be that no Republican could have won in 1964 given LBJ’s claim he was carrying on the legacy of Kennedy. But the size of the landslide I think both emboldened Johnson to pursue a radical Great Society agenda and gave him massive majorities in Congress with which to enact such sweeping change. Imagine how much better off the country would have been without Medicare, Medicaid, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (which laid the groundwork for the Department of Education), Department of Transportation, the “War” on Poverty (which spent $5T without budging the total number of poor in America) etc.
Had Republicans nominated a more mainstream candidate, I think the election would have been much closer and this would have undercut Johnson’s ability to do as much damage as he did.
Remember there were only three networks and non of them was bipartisan.