Barry Goldwater Speaks Out 1964 Goldwater for President Committee, New Hampshire Primary

Published on September 14, 2017

Government, Politics, Politicians… playlist:

more at

Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

Wikipedia license:

Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 — May 29, 1998) was a businessman and five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party’s nominee for president in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as “Mr. Conservative”.

Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.

Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought through the conservative coalition to defeat the New Deal coalition. He mobilized a large conservative constituency to win the hard-fought Republican primaries. Goldwater’s right-wing campaign platform ultimately failed to gain the support of the electorate and he lost the 1964 presidential election to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history, bringing down many Republican candidates as well. The Johnson campaign and other critics painted him as a reactionary, while supporters praised his crusades against the Soviet Union, labor unions, and the welfare state. His defeat allowed Johnson and the Democrats in Congress to pass the Great Society programs, but the defeat of so many older Republicans in 1964 also cleared the way for a younger generation of American conservatives to mobilize. Goldwater was much less active as a national leader of conservatives after 1964; his supporters mostly rallied behind Ronald Reagan, who became governor of California in 1967 and the 40th President of the United States in 1981.

Goldwater returned to the Senate in 1969, and specialized in defense policy, bringing to the table his experience as a senior officer in the Air Force Reserve. In 1974, as an elder statesman of the party, Goldwater successfully urged President Richard Nixon to resign when evidence of a cover-up in the Watergate scandal became overwhelming and impeachment was imminent. By the 1980s, the increasing influence of the Christian right on the Republican Party so conflicted with Goldwater’s views that he became a vocal opponent of the religious right on issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the role of religion in public life. A significant accomplishment in his career was the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which restructured the higher levels of the Pentagon by increasing the power of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to direct military action…

Goldwater was born in Phoenix, in what was then the Arizona Territory, the son of Baron M. Goldwater and his wife, Hattie Josephine (“JoJo”) Williams. His father’s Jewish family had founded Goldwater’s, the largest department store in Phoenix…

Goldwater entered Phoenix politics in 1949 when he was elected to the City Council as part of a nonpartisan group of candidates who focused on “cleaning up” widespread prostitution and gambling. As a Republican he won a seat in the US Senate in 1952, when he upset veteran Democrat and Senate majority leader Ernest McFarland…

In 1964, he fought and won a bitterly contested, multi-candidate race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. His main rival was New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, whom he defeated by a narrow margin in the bitterly fought California primary. His nomination was opposed by liberal Republicans, who thought Goldwater’s demand for rollback, defeat of the Soviet Union, would foment a nuclear war. Goldwater lost to President Lyndon Johnson by a massive landslide, pulling down the GOP, which lost many seats in both houses of Congress. Goldwater carried only his home state and five Deep South states.

Goldwater remained popular in Arizona, and in the 1968 Senate election he was elected (this time) to the seat of retiring Senator Carl Hayden…

Tags:
Enjoyed this video?
"No Thanks. Please Close This Box!"