# What was so extreme about Barry Goldwater? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 1, 2014, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281 "2014-02-01T15:13:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/21 "2014-02-01T20:45:11Z")
Since this is basically political, let’s move it to Great Debates. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/22 "2014-02-01T20:45:17Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Is it true that Nixon posted nukes in the Vietnam area during the tensest time? Since U.S. Navy ships routinely carry nuclear weapons and the U.S. Navy has a significant presence there I’m not sure how this would not have been an inevitability. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/23 "2014-02-01T20:49:32Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Johnson had a field day with Goldwater. Notably with the [“Daisy Girl”](http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy) commercial, one of the most famous - and probably effective - political ads ever made. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/24 "2014-02-01T21:25:42Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Notably with the [“Daisy Girl”](http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy) commercial, one of the most famous - and probably effective - political ads ever made. Johnson’s campaign was so effective, in the “Daisy Girl” ad and in his slogans, it has essentially ‘won’ the battle for the historical narrative. If Goldwater is remembered in the popular conciousness, is is as a dangerous cold warrior - a would-be presidential Colonel Ripper. I guess the real issue is this: how fair a portrait of the man is this? Johnson was famous for his “pig-fucking” of political foes (the legend [which may not be literally true 😃] goes that, early in his career, Johnson had his aides spread a story that a rival of his liked to have sex with pigs - an aide responded “Christ, Lyndon, we can’t call the guy a pigfucker. It isn’t true.” To which LBJ supposedly replied “Of course it ain’t true, but I want to make the son-of-a-bitch deny it.”) Is this reputation of Goldwater an example of that - or is it, essentially, true? I know he made comments about using nukes in Vietnam, which definitely adds weight to the “nuts” camp! ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/25 "2014-02-01T22:09:57Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Notably with the [“Daisy Girl”](http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy) commercial, one of the most famous - and probably effective - political ads ever made. Amazingly effective. It literally only ran once, but it’s about the most well-known political television ad in American political history. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/26 "2014-02-01T22:30:02Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Amazingly effective. It literally only ran once, but it’s about the most well-known political television ad in American political history. I recall seeing it during the campaign, but it must have been being discussed on another program rather than being shown as a commercial. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/27 "2014-02-01T22:42:12Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I recall seeing it during the campaign, but it must have been being discussed on another program rather than being shown as a commercial. Yes. The campaign only ran it once. Every other time anybody saw it was on the news or discussion panel shows. There’s still some uncertainty whether pulling the ad was a strategy of the Johnson campaign to GET it onto the news and discussion shows or whether the campaign really was prompted by the widespread shock at the bluntness of the ad to pull it. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/28 "2014-02-01T23:05:13Z")
At the time, the Republican party had a moderate and even progressive wing - delegates famously walked out of the Republican convention during the 1964 convention. Nixon had received 32 percent of the black vote in 1960 and blacks made up 1% of the delegates in 1964. They were appalled by Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act and his Southern strategy - remember this is the party of Lincoln that we’re talking about. From Geoffrey Kabaservice’s _Rule or Ruin_. The Republican Senator from New York, Kenneth Keating, denounced Goldwater but did not bolt the party: he said, “The Republican party is bigger than one man or one Convention… In the past, Republicanism has been almost synonymous with moderation. Senator Goldwater cannot expect to win the support of a broad cross-section of Republicans by his attacks on moderation and his defense of extremism, whether in our foreign or domestic policies.” Over the long haul of course, Keating’s wing disappeared. Let’s be clear about something. Goldwater didn’t merely vote against the Civil Rights Act. He campaigned against it vociferously, making inflammatory charges that it would lead to a, “Federal police state of mammoth proportions”, and create an “Informer psychology”. The NAACP had a response of course, Mississippi at the time _already was a police state_ after all. Moderates supported late entrant Bill Scranton, Governor of Pennsylvania. Scranton’s campaign, “…lambasted Goldwater’s calls to make Social Security voluntary, drop atomic bombs in Asia, break diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and repeal income tax laws.” In Atlanta he drew crowds hailing the New South and attacked those, “…who would reopen old wounds by phony invocation of the Constitution or by comparison of the Federal Government of the United States with a police state dictatorship.” Scranton received his bump in the polls, but he was too late. Goldwater was nominated and modern conservatism was born at the national level. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/29 "2014-02-01T23:06:31Z")
Even back in 1964, Goldwater was seen as someone with intelligence and personal integrity – but whose ideas were outside the mainstream. Here’s a [Goldwater campaign brochure from 1964](http://www.4president.org/brochures/goldwater1964brochure.htm). Naturally, most of what it says is long on rhetoric and short on specifics. But he does get very specific on a couple of points when it gets to Civil Rights. > [@](#): > > "The right to vote, to equal treatment before the law, to hold property, and to the protection of contracts are clearly guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. These rights should be rigorously enforced. Existing law demands it. > > "In the schools, the Attorney General already has the authority through court decrees to effect integration. But if more authority must be granted, we should write a law that is tightly drawn, that can be used like a rifle, not a shotgun. > > “As for the proposed public accommodations law, it is unconstitutional and a clear example of a new law which will only hinder, not help the cause of racial tolerance. Such a law could even open the door to a police-state system of enforcement that would eventually threaten the liberty of us all.” Ironically, Goldwater was a longtime member of the Urban League and had been a member of the NAACP until “they began calling me an S.O.B.” Goldwater was one of a number of Republicans who[opposed Medicare](http://thinkprogress.org/health/2009/07/29/170887/medicare-44/). Here’s a [1963 profile on Goldwater](http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/1963-08-24.pdf)which talks about some of his more noted stances, including selling the Tennessee Valley Authority and “effete Easterners.” ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/30 "2014-02-01T23:47:30Z")
Goldwater got into a heated exchange with Defense Secretary McNamara over the effectiveness of missiles. Goldwater favored bomber airplanes and attacked McNamara’s support for missiles as the “stupidest statement” a Defense Secretary had ever made. He called for the US to drop out of the UN. During the Republican primary campaign, he referred to Nelson Rockefeller as the candidate of the “radical left”, and criticized him for doing business with China. He voted against the Civil Rights Act, calling it unconstitutional. He wanted Social Security to be optional. He wanted to sell off the Tennessee Valley Authority. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/31 "2014-02-02T00:59:07Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I think he can basically be described as a libertarian and military hawk. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t belong. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/32 "2014-02-02T01:23:04Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Let’s be clear about something. Goldwater didn’t merely vote against the Civil Rights Act. He campaigned against it vociferously, making inflammatory charges that it would lead to a, “Federal police state of mammoth proportions”, and create an “Informer psychology”. The NAACP had a response of course, Mississippi at the time _already was a police state_ after all. Goldwater’s insistence on civil rights being a matter for individual states was not only wrong-headed but political suicide as well. Public opinion had swung heavily in favour of the civil rights movement that year, especially after the deaths of the [Mississippi Three](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers%27_murders). Since some of the violence against the protestors was either state-sanctioned or the state turned a blind eye, Goldwater was, in effect, supporting the violence. Voters didn’t care about states’ rights in the matter; they just wanted the violence to stop. (PBS aired a great documentary a few weeks ago on the events of the year 1964 and how they set the stage for American political and social life in the decades to come. The presidential campaign is a key pivoting point. [Link](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/1964/player/), but I think it’s only available in the U.S.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/33 "2014-02-02T01:38:45Z")
> [@Esox\_Lucius](#): > > Goldwater’s insistence on civil rights being a matter for individual states was not only wrong-headed but political suicide as well. Public opinion had swung heavily in favour of the civil rights movement that year, especially after the deaths of the [Mississippi Three](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers%27_murders). Since some of the violence against the protestors was either state-sanctioned or the state turned a blind eye, Goldwater was, in effect, supporting the violence. Voters didn’t care about states’ rights in the matter; they just wanted the violence to stop. > > (PBS aired a great documentary a few weeks ago on the events of the year 1964 and how they set the stage for American political and social life in the decades to come. The presidential campaign is a key pivoting point. [Link](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/1964/player/), but I think it’s only available in the U.S.) Let me get this straight. If you and I both support Political Cause X, and I go out and kill someone who doesn’t, you’re supporting violence against the political opposition? Or are you only doing so “in effect”, which means… what? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/34 "2014-02-02T05:01:41Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Let me get this straight. If you and I both support Political Cause X, and I go out and kill someone who doesn’t, you’re supporting violence against the political opposition? Or are you only doing so “in effect”, which means… what? Assuming I’m parsing this correctly, I’ll just point out that you can support Cause X without using the sort of inflammatory apocalyptic dog-whistling rhetoric that tends to inspire violence. Like oh say, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” which pissed off enough Republicans to encourage some of them to walk out of the Republican convention hall. Sure, it’s a cliche now. It wasn’t then. Then there’s the talk of the Civil Rights Act turning the US into a police state. Sorta encourages the lawless, ya? ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/35 "2014-02-02T05:15:04Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I’ll type very slowly. 😃 > > My father, a political moderate, thought Goldwater so extremely rightist that the appropriate place for his button was on a book about the Third Reich. My father was a very measured and deliberate man and this is about as extreme a comment as I can recall him ever making. My point was that this was a viewpoint of an intelligent, educated and considered political middleman in the era. > > You may laugh now. If your father thought that Goldwater was a fascist, then however, measured and intelligent and educated he might have been, he was just wrong on this one. Goldwater said things that no-one else on the political scene was saying. He was in favor of very limited government, especially the federal government. That does not make a fascist, that is the opposite of a fascist. I can’t find a quote directly on the topic, but I think he would have also opposed the kind of corporate welfare that we have devolved into. Some of his views may have been naive or ill-considered, but they were not (this part is my opinion) motivated by anything underhanded or evil, like the kind of lust for power that motivates fascism. On the military side, he was viewed as a dangerous hawk, and I would probably have opposed him if I could have voted at the time on those grounds, since he didn’t do much to effectively deny it. And yet look what we got from the man who was elected - a vicious, brutal, useless war that tore our country apart (not to mention the one where the fighting took place). I wonder if Goldwater would have had more sense, or at least would not have lied his way into it like Johnson did. Roddy ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/36 "2014-02-02T05:39:46Z")
I partially agree with Roderick Femm: Goldwater was certainly saying things that nobody else was saying. Like advocating the use of nuclear weapons in Asia, which besides from being a really bad idea is arguably a war crime given the context. Propping up white supremacy in the south with coded and not so coded language was also unique in its own way. And yet people called him a fascist, at a time when the racial _and militaristic_ policies of Nazi Germany were within living memory of most adults. Imagine! ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/37 "2014-02-02T05:52:20Z")
When Goldwater warned of a police state he assumed something that didn’t happen: effective enforcement of the Civil Rights act against ordinary people. In order for that to actually happen, you would need a police state. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/38 "2014-02-02T06:49:56Z")
This thread is the first time that I’ve heard “in your guts, you know he’s nuts” and I’m a student of political history. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/39 "2014-02-02T07:43:58Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > This thread is the first time that I’ve heard “in your guts, you know he’s nuts” and I’m a student of political history. From the Wiki page of the [1964 General Election](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1964): > [@](#): > > Johnson positioned himself as a moderate and succeeded in portraying Goldwater as an extremist. Goldwater had a habit of making blunt statements about war, nuclear weapons, and economics that could be turned against him. Most famously, the Johnson campaign broadcast a television commercial on September 7 dubbed the “Daisy Girl” ad, which featured a little girl picking petals from a daisy in a field, counting the petals, which then segues into a launch countdown and a nuclear explosion.[20] The ads were in response to Goldwater’s advocacy of “tactical” nuclear weapons use in Vietnam[citation needed]. “Confessions of a Republican”, another Johnson ad, features a monologue from a man who tells us that he had previously voted for Eisenhower and Nixon, but now worries about the “men with strange ideas”, “weird groups” and “the head of the Ku Klux Klan” who were supporting Goldwater: he concludes that “either they’re not Republicans, or I’m not”.[21] Voters increasingly viewed Goldwater as a right wing fringe candidate—his slogan “In your heart, you know he’s right” was successfully parodied by the Johnson campaign into **“In your guts, you know he’s nuts”** , or “In your heart, you know he might” (as in push the nuclear button), or even “In your heart, he’s too far right” (some cynics wore buttons saying “Even Johnson is better than Goldwater!”) (bolding mine) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/40 "2014-02-02T07:52:36Z")
I can’t find any evidence that Johnson was the one who parodied Goldwater’s slogan with the slogan “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that anyone associated with a political campaign would come up with, let alone the politician himself. It sounds like a comedian’s flippant offhand statement. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281.md?page=3)