This article, written from the perspective of the Left, is a bit hysterical but on the mark. Goldwater lost the battle but won the war. And he lived long enough to savor the taste of victory.
Some comments…
In two years Brown would lose his seat to Ronald Reagan…
And although Johnson buried Goldwater in California, the Republican George Murphy easily beat Kennedy icon Pierre Salinger for the Senate seat to which Brown had appointed him upon the death of Clair Engel in a year earlier.
Nearly 4 million Americans volunteered to work for his campaign.
Yup. My virgin effort in politics as a high school student back in New Jersey.
My mother was a Goldwater Girl. She still has her elephant pin with the Goldwater glasses. I cannot wait to pass that pin on to my own daughter.
"In our hearts, we knew he was right."
Not really. When you left a Goldwater rally you left knowing that you had just heard an honest man who had told you what you needed to hear, not necessarily what you wanted to hear. He was not a Reagan or a Kennedy but he was a far better speaker than Nixon, Ford, Carter or George H. W. Bush. And compared with Johnson, Goldwater was pure eloquence.
The campaign was "poor" in the sense that Goldwater pandered to no one. But that was not what doomed his campaign. As was observed at the time, the bullet that killed Kennedy killed any chance that Goldwater had to become president. Had Kennedy not been shot, the 1964 election definitely would have been closer and may have resulted in a Goldwater victory.
The Girl next to me had 1 small Johnson badge. (she was a commy!)
One can only wish it were so.
And who wouldn't rather be "on their own", when the alternative is to have the Democrats "taking care of you" thru the medium of the federal bureaucracy?
Sister was a Goldwater Girl from Tucson; As a 9 year old, mom and I canvassed our precinct for Barry. Of course, it being Tucson, it wasn't particularly hard....mostly a foregone conclusion.
The bumper stickers my father's car had:
AuH2O
In your heart, you know he's right
Left them there till 1970.
Nice to see some people here on FR like Barry. The other day I made some flattering remarks about him and was immediately flamed. "worst campaign ever". "went for gay rights". "supported a Democrat". "supported abortion".
Yeah, that was Goldwater. Got older, still being a contrarian. So he went against the grain occasionally, even the conservative grain. I don't think his core principals changed. Read "With No Apologies". The prescience is remarkable. He was, of course, Right.
Goldwater's singular achievement was to pave the way for the Reagan Revolution of the 1980's in two ways. First, the apparent triumph of LBJ and extreme New Dealism drove the Democrat party every further and further to the left, disaffecting and alienating their blue-collar, fundamentally conservative, Democrat base (the "Reagan Democrats"). Hence, Nixon's "southern strategy", massive defections from the Democrat party, and the phenomenon of "neo-conservatism." Second, it is impossible to imagine Reagan's victory in 1980 without a pre-Reagan, conservative sacrificial lamb -- Goldwater was the conservative offering on the altar of political immolation. The liberals took their best shot at Barry -- he was vilified as every rotten thing under the sun. When Reagan came along later, their attacks on him had no punch -- people had seen the essential hollowness of the Democrat agenda and rhetoric.
Although he reveled in his "contrarian" aura, Barry Goldwater was a fine conservative, a good Senator, and great American.