A reader writes:

Didn’t disagree with anything in it, huh? How about
“Fast forward to today. A Republican Party that is more conservative than Mr. Goldwater could have imagined controls the White House, Congress, many governors’ mansions and a majority of seats in state legislatures.”
Now I can’t say for sure, but I bet ol’ Barry could have imagined a Republican Party that is more conservative than the Medicare-enlarging, No-child-left-behind-ing, campaign-finance-reform-signing crew we’ve got in the WH right now. I know I can.
Even on foreign policy, btw, while commendably hawkish, this group is tough to classify as “conservative” in any historical sense.

Me: I’m glad I got corrected on this because I missed it in the op-ed. The reader’s right. Without looking up the details this second, I would say that Goldwater was certainly more hostile to the New Deal and the Great Society than Reagan, Gingrich or the Bushes. And his talk about lobbing a nuke into the Kremlin was certainly more “hawkish” than fretting about collateral damage as we do now.