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So the heart, mind and soul of Barry Goldwater was hijacked by his second wife. LMAO

I would be the first conservative to cut a fellow conservative some slack. But Goldwater never cut anyone any slack. As Feder's piece says, Goldwater was a bitter man to the very end. The basic principle of a right to life for all human beings, trumps the concept of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". When Barry Goldwater began lending his support to Roe v Wade, he ceased to be a "true" conservative.

Here's some more reading material on Goldwater and abortion rights. Link to "Barry Goldwater: Champion of Liberty, But for Whom?"

Interesting, I did not know about his first wife and Planned Parenthood, but know more about the second wife. I won't argue the bitterness angle, because he was very bitter, especially towards Reagan, whom he believed reaped all the rewards of BG's groundwork-laying in the early '60s. It only grew throughout the '80s and clearly his hatred was beginning to blind him (along with senility). After wife #1's death, his second wife was clearly manipulating and directing him to defeat many Conservative efforts (one of the seminal moments was the infamous 6th House race, cited in the article, the English-Wead race). One last thing should be pointed out as well, I was never of the opinion that Goldwater was "fully" a Conservative in the first place, too much of it seemed Libertarian. The abortion issue could be explained away with that, but that doesn't account for the hypocrisy. But, again, it comes right back to the bitterness... Barry still remains one of my heroes, but that of 1964 Barry, not post-1980 Barry (when he should've retired, rather than barely hold onto that Senate seat that he was almost defeated for in a year that should've been a cakewalk. Just imagine if he had been defeated, wouldn't that have been ironic ?).

You keep making the same silly point. -- Sure, - Goldwater went off the deep end and became very bitter after his defeat. Big deal.
The real point is that the republican party was hijacked by the nixon rinos, who imo, 'helped' in his defeat. We are still paying the price.