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Jun 3, 2016 · The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation was established by Congress in 1986 to serve as a living memorial to honor the lifetime work of Senator Barry Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years in the U.S. Senate. By providing scholarships to college sophomores and ...
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Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 [1] – May 29, 1998) was an American politician and major general in the Air Force Reserve who served as a United States senator from 1953 to 1965 and 1969 to 1987, and was the Republican Party 's nominee for president in 1964 . Goldwater was born in Phoenix, Arizona, where he helped manage his family's ...
- 1941–1967
- University of Arizona (did not graduate)
- 4, including Barry Jr.
- Republican
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- Overview
- Goldwater Offered Stark Contrast to Johnson’s Big Government Policies
- Goldwater’s Conservatism, Initially Rejected as Radical, Infused the Republican Party
Despite a landslide loss, the Arizona Republican ignited his party's ultra-conservative wing for decades to come.
When the far-right Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater ran for the American presidency in 1964, he never even pretended to woo voters in the political center. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” declared Goldwater in his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination at its 1964 convention. “And…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
That fall, incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson crushed Goldwater in a historic landslide, carrying more than 60 percent of the vote. Goldwater won only his home state and five deep South states that had long leaned Democratic, but were struggling with the party’s actions supporting civil rights.
Goldwater was, without doubt, a divisive figure: Democratic detractors like Martin Luther King. Jr. and then-California Governor Pat Brown had compared his blunt, pull-no-punches rhetoric to Hitler. Within his own party, moderates responded with varying degrees of dismay or horror to his policies. On the eve of the 1964 GOP convention, the Republican governor of Pennsylvania, William Scranton, publicly released a letter he had written to Goldwater decrying the latter’s “crazy quilt” of “dangerous positions,” including his casual attitude toward the use of nuclear weapons.
But while his own bid for the White House flamed out, the embers of Goldwater’s political philosophy—championing small government and individual freedoms—would ignite the party's conservative wing for decades to come.
READ MORE: What Are Swing States and How Did They Become So Critical?
1964 Republican presidential candidate Senator Berry Goldwater (R) and his running mate William Miller, a New York congressman
Goldwater, who traded running his family’s department store for a career in politics, eventually served five terms in the Senate starting in 1952. When running for president, the rough-edged, charismatic Westerner overcame his party’s old guard by galvanizing a grassroots coalition of businesspeople, Southerners, Midwesterners and libertarians who felt sidelined by the GOP. It was their values, not those of wealthy Eastern elites, that should prevail in the Republican platform, he argued as he rallied to defeat primary rivals like New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the Boston Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge. "Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea,” he famously told the press in the early 1960s. While Johnson was loudly declaring a War on Poverty, Goldwater waged war on the moderate wing of his own party.
Goldwater warned in the acceptance speech that “any who do not care for our cause” didn’t belong within the GOP ranks. Today, that “cause”—the pursuit of a balanced budget and limited government, coupled with a hardline stance on foreign policy and defense—would become central to the party’s mission. Welfare? It should be a private matter, Goldwater proclaimed. Farm subsidies needed to go. He saw the federal government as bloated and failing to offer real opportunity to Americans. During the election, he voted against the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, arguing some of its provisions impinged on individual freedoms.
This don’t-tread-on-me philosophy appealed to voters who vividly recalled the battles surrounding the 1930s New Deal, and resented what they saw as their diminished control over their own lives and businesses. The government spent too much, interfered too much, and wielded too much power, they believed—and Goldwater seemed to give voice to these convictions as LBJ doubled down on the government’s role in the economy and society. “I have little interest in streamlining government or making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size,” Goldwater wrote. “I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom.”
What mattered to Goldwater’s supporters as much as his policies was his candid, outspoken style. Crowds packed his rallies, greeting him as he made up to a dozen appearances daily courtesy of his Boeing 727. “Something must be done, and done immediately, to swing away from this obsessive concern for the rights of the criminal defendant” to combat crime and lawlessness and restore order, he told one audience. He pledged to “redress Constitutional interpretation in favor of the public” by appointing judges who prioritized individual rights.
His fans lapped it up, even when Goldwater’s plainspokenness sometimes went too far. One Georgia supporter offered the candidate a taste of the beverage he had concocted and was selling from the back of his truck: “Gold Water,” or “The Right Drink For the Conservative Taste.” The man of the hour was underwhelmed. “This tastes like piss,” he said, spitting it out.
A campaign button for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential bid quotes from his speech accepting the Republican nomination.
Goldwater’s views–and his lasting legacy–are reflected in the slim, ghostwritten book he published in 1960, The Conscience of a Conservative. “Its publishers originally fretted over distributing an initial press run of 5,000 copies,” recalled Steven Hayward, a professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy. But as Goldwater campaigned in 1964, his followers on the GOP’s right wing snapped up copies, propelling it to The New York Times bestseller list.
The 123-page manifesto hasn’t been out of print since. It is a regular feature of college courses in politics, government and economics. The book pops up on lists of recommended reading by those on the Republican’s right wing.
Goldwater’s campaign slogan—“In your heart, you know he’s right”—may have suggested that Americans voters in 1964 weren’t willing to be as outspoken opponents of a strong federal government or supporters of the candidate’s ultra-conservative views. That would change over the decades that followed, as his ideas and supporters moved slowly but steadily to the forefront of the Republican Party. Positions that seemed far to the right in the 1960s moved gradually to the mainstream, from originalist interpretations of the constitution to limited government and a distaste for the mainstream media—which his supporters dubbed “the rat-fink Eastern press.”
Many historians trace the ascendance of far-right candidates and groups within the GOP to Goldwater’s failed, but memorable, campaign. An early example: Ronald Reagan’s barn-burning 1964 speech on national TV, supporting Goldwater’s hawkish foreign policy and his determination to shrink government. In 1964, Reagan’s political career was just gaining momentum; two decades later, he would shake up the political establishment by pursuing Goldwater-like hawkish policies vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, while proclaiming that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
READ MORE: How Ronald Reagan's 1976 Convention Battle Fueled His 1980 Landslide
The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by the United States Congress in 1986 in honor of former United States Senator and 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Its goal is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships ...
Ham Operator. Photographer. Politician. Barry M. Goldwater was born in Phoenix, Arizona January 1, 1909. He attended grade school in Phoenix and at age 13, succeeded in setting up the first commercial radio transmitter in Arizona, KFDA – the 36th station licensed in the U.S. He attended high school at Staunton Military Academy in Virginia ...
The Barry Goldwater Scholarship Program, one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics in the United States, seeks to identify and support college sophomores and juniors who show exceptional promise of becoming this Nation’s next generation of research leaders in these fields.
