>>>>Goldwater destroyed the GOP <<<<<<
Silly and a favorite disingenuous spin from the Religionists whom Goldwater warned the GOP about.
Other facts:
1) Goldwater didn’t want to run for POTUS but was drafted.
2) Johnson ran on the coattails and memory of JFK who had been murdered a year earlier. No imaginable GOP candidate could have overcome that handicap.
3) The conservative baton was passed from Buckley to Goldwater to Reagan. To deny that or assert otherwise is simply a lie.
Reagan brought together the Moral Majority and the fiscal conservatives. Previously, the way to the south was to bring up race (i.e., opposition to the civil rights act, the southern strategy of nixon) or to simply lose it, as in the case of Ford vs Carter.
Hispanics are the future. We will not be able to win them over with economic theory and we should not pander to them with amnesty but they can be brought to the party by talking about values.