As a one-off, 46-year-old example, Goldwater is like the Timothy McVeigh of conservative presidential candidates. But if Goldwater is going to keep being used as a boogeyman to scare conservatives, let's at least get the history straight.
Ironically, the elites also compared Reagan to Goldwater and predicted a devastating defeat for him in 1980. But Reagan didn't lose. He not only never lost an election, he never won by less than a landslide. (You might say Reagan's opponents suffered Goldwater-style defeats.)
So what was the difference between Goldwater and Reagan? Had the country changed that much in 16 years?
The social issues were the difference. Reagan agreed with Goldwater on fiscal and national defense issues, but by 1980, social issues loomed large and Reagan came down mightily on one side -- the opposite side as Goldwater, as it turned out.
Unlike abortion-loving Goldwater, Reagan said, "We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide."
And unlike gay-marriage-loving Goldwater, Reagan said: "Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. ... We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality."
I preferred Goldwater to Johnson, but any time anyone tells you that social conservatives can't win but social liberals can, remember that Reagan won landslide victories while Goldwater lost in an equally big landslide.
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