Conservative Roots

President Johnson demolished Barry Goldwater in the presidential election, receiving 61 percent of the popular vote and carrying 44 states. Liberal commentators declared that the Conservative movement was dead. James Reston, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, concluded that “Barry Goldwater not only lost the presidential election…but the Conservative cause as well.”
Conservatives emphatically disagreed.

“The landslide majority did not vote against the Conservative philosophy,” wrote Ronald Reagan; “they voted against a false image our liberal opponents successfully mounted.”

National Review senior editor Frank Meyer pointed out that, despite the liberal campaign to make conservatism seem “extremist, radical, nihilist, anarchic,” twofifths of the voters still voted for the Conservative alternative.

Human Events stated that the Goldwater campaign had accomplished three critical things: “The Republican Party is essentially Conservative; the South is developing into a major pivot of its power; and a candidate who possesses Goldwater’s virtues but lacks some of his handicaps can win the presidency.”

An Enduring Legacy

There was another critical legacy of the Goldwater campaign I want to mention the entry of thousands of young people into American politics and policymaking. These young conservatives now sit in Congress and on the Supreme Court, manage campaigns and raise millions of dollars, head think tanks like The Heritage Foundation and write seminal books, edit magazines, and anchor radio and television programs.

In addition, Barry Goldwater addressed in a serious and substantive way issues that have been at the center of the national debate ever since Social Security, government subsidies, privatization, morality in government, and communism. Campaign strategist John Sears summed up that Goldwater changed “the rhetoric of politics” by challenging the principles of the New Deal, “something no Democrat or Republican before him had dared to do.”

There were several milestones in the first 20 years of the Conservative movement, such as the publication of The Conservative Mind and the founding of National Review, but none equaled the political salience of Barry Goldwater’s seemingly quixotic run for the White House. His candidacy was “like a first love” for countless young men and women, never to be forgotten, always to be cherished. It was the beginning rather than the end of conservatism’s political ascendancy.