Republicans and Evangelicals I Barry Goldwater – How Republicans Welcomed Extremism - Part One

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Barry Goldwater may be one of the most interesting figures in Republican history. He grew up the son of a wealthy department store owner. He was a city council member and then a senator from Arizona. He was handsome and took pictures with guns and cacti. Goldwater was also a libertarian who wanted a small government and low taxes.

His platform was laid out in a ghostwritten book Conscience of a Conservative. L. Brent Bozell wrote the book. He was a member of the John Birch Society. The book advocated for state's rights, though Goldwater argued that he was not a racist. The problem is that the South had long been using state's rights complaints to justify their oppression of black people. So, was Goldwater a racist? He sure as heck did what racists wanted.

He also advocated for nuclear weapons in the US, an end to progressive taxation, and strange plans to reduce government spending. He courted extremists, mashing traditional conservatism false conspiracies and bad actors. The Republican Party would eventually bounce back to being an establishment party, but not for long. Many of Goldwater's ideas would be carried out by Reagan just a decade and a half later.

CORRECTION: The original version of this episode said that Goldwater served in WWI. It was WWII. Sorry! The error has been corrected.

Sources

• Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein
• The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro. Especially The Passage of Power
• Bichers by Matthew Dallek
• A Choice Not An Echo by Phyllis Schlafly
• Buckley: William F Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism by Cart T. Bogus
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05MPUsdFyQY The Memory Palace episode 130 “Independence Hall 2: The Legend of Walter Knott”
• 1964 Republican Party Platform
• Heather Cox Richardson's video series on the history of GOP

Questions

• What does it mean for someone to be a "conservative"?
• How does it impact us when we are tied to organizations like the John Birch Society? How did it impact conservatives?
• Discuss the relationship between the state's rights argument and racism.
• Was Goldwater a racist?
• Many of the people we've covered over the years have been public speakers. Should we take a second pass at vetting our public speakers?

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