Goldwater’s Famous ‘Gaffe’

GOLDWATER’S FAMOUS ‘GAFFE’

On the evening of July 16, 1964, in the Cow Palace in San Francisco, Senator Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the Presidency. It had been a long, a very long road to that climactic moment. The grassroots movement for Goldwater’s candidacy had existed for a long time, functioning outside the traditional party structure. I know, since I had joined Ohioans for Goldwater—a very nonestablishment group—long before the assassination of President Kennedy. But that melancholy event had drastically altered the political equation. Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” had been severely damaged by the presence in the White House of the first Southern President since the Civil War. This in turn revived the hitherto hopeless presidential ambitions of Nelson Rockefeller, who was able to enlist in his ranks all the gurus of “me too” Republicanism.

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Harry V. Jaffa

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GOLDWATER’S FAMOUS ‘GAFFE’

On the evening of July 16, 1964, in the Cow Palace in San Francisco, Senator Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the Presidency. It had been a long, a very long road to that climactic moment. The grassroots movement for Goldwater’s candidacy had existed for a long time, functioning outside the traditional party structure. I know, since I had joined Ohioans for Goldwater—a very nonestablishment group—long before the assassination of President Kennedy. But that melancholy event had drastically altered the political equation. Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” had been severely damaged by the presence in the White House of the first Southern President since the Civil War. This in turn revived the hitherto hopeless presidential ambitions of Nelson Rockefeller, who was able to enlist in his ranks all the gurus of “me too” Republicanism.