The reason Goldwater lost is simple ~ he gave away the 30% of the black vote previous Republicans had received AND he gave away the Social Conservative vote ~ maybe not as big back then as now, but the idiot gave it away.
Nixon is almost a special case since he later on won two times, but in his first race he was the GOP-e (liberal lite) candidate against the more Conservative Democrat JFK.
Nixon never ran that way again.
Pappy Bush won when the Reagan Conservative base still thought of him as their kind of Conservative. When they found out he was a GOP-e backstabber they dumped him like yesterday's garbage.
Dole and McCain failed to come to grips with the demographic realities of today's Republican party and gave too much head to the GOP-e. In fact, McCain hired on all of Romney's backstabbers and that pretty much nullified any social Conservative leverage he'd gained with Sarah Palin on the ticket.
Here's how bad it is for your boy Romney. His life's experience, his political and social beliefs, and even his voting record, who he associates with, his likes and dislikes parallel those of Wendell Willkie. Roosevelt was a sick man and his campaign ran through Willkie like (p..p) through a goose!
A NOTE: I've noticed almost none of the Mittbots are unwilling to discuss Willkie.
You are probably thinking of the Goldwater and the America of the 1980s and 1990s. Goldwater didn't "give away" the social conservative vote in 1964. In fact there really wasn't a "social conservative vote" to win or lose then -- before abortion and homosexuality and drugs and busing became issues.
As it was Goldwater campaigned on the social issues of his day -- crime and school prayer. Like it or not, civil rights was considered a "social issue" back then and a lot of people voted for Goldwater because of his stand -- which lost him far more votes than it gained him. Nobody voted against Barry Goldwater because his wife believed in birth control. It wasn't an issue.
If any Republican nominee was outside or against the party establishment (which really existed back then) it was Goldwater -- more so even than Reagan -- and Goldwater lost big. Anybody who knows anything about that campaign knows about the bitterness of the Goldwater-Rockefeller animosity.
Nixon is almost a special case since he later on won two times, but in his first race he was the GOP-e (liberal lite) candidate against the more Conservative Democrat JFK.
There weren't many real issues in 1960. Kennedy campaigned on a non-existent "missile gap" to get to the right of Nixon, but anybody who knew politics knew Nixon was not more liberal than Kennedy. Galbraith and Schlesinger and the other Harvard professors knew that. Nowadays, people make out that Kennedy's tax cuts made him conservative, but cutting taxes without cutting spending wasn't considered a conservative practice at the time.
Dole and McCain failed to come to grips with the demographic realities of today's Republican party and gave too much head to the GOP-e.
What about the economic realities in the country at the time? Nobody was going to beat Clinton with Perot in the race, and no Republican was going to succeed Bush -- not after the economy tanked. If there had been a strong conservative candidate maybe that candidate would have beaten Dole or McCain for the nomination, but that candidate didn't exist.
When I say "a strong conservative candidate" I mean someone who had wide, crossover appeal, somebody who didn't only appeal to true believers. There wasn't such a candidate and there was no guarantee that such a candidate could have won, given the state of the economy in 1996 or 2008.
When the tired old guy wins the nomination, it's a good sign that nobody sees a more electable alternative out there. A tired, but more conservative candidate wouldn't have been able to pull it off in either election.
In fact, McCain hired on all of Romney's backstabbers and that pretty much nullified any social Conservative leverage he'd gained with Sarah Palin on the ticket.
Like McCain didn't have plenty of staffers of his own? Like McCain needed Romneyites to make himself liberal? Like -- in the widely circulated myth -- McCain needed Romney staffers to badmouth Palin? Like his own loyalists didn't have it in for her? Like Axelrod and Plouffe needed Romneyites to make attacks on Palin for them? Got any more myths?
Palin won McCain some votes and lost him some votes. Possibly on balance she won him more votes than she lost him, but no way was she going to win him enough votes to take the election.
Roosevelt was a sick man and his campaign ran through Willkie like (p..p) through a goose!
Roosevelt wasn't that sick in 1940, but let that go. Blame the Germans and the French. After Hitler crushed France, Americans didn't want to pick a new guy who'd have to go through on the job training.
A NOTE: I've noticed almost none of the Mittbots are unwilling to discuss Willkie.
My point is that all politicians disappoint. All ideologies have their problems. Pretending that there's some ideal candidate with some ideal ideology who could win, when such a candidate doesn't appear is living in a fantasy world. We have elections between candidates who actually exist and manage to prevail in the primary process. Candidates who don't exist or don't win in the primaries aren't going to come out on top in the general election.
When Goldwater ran, abortion, homosexuality (even welfare was not) where non issues, so what is it you mean by social issues?
Why would anyone discuss Willkie, I am really confident he is not running.