51 years ago today on Jan. 3, 1964, U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona announced his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination. A Nov. 1963 poll conducted days before President Kennedys assassination showed JFK beating Goldwater, 55-39 percent. It was not to be the campaign (Goldwater) hoped for against Kennedy, writes Theodore H. White in The Making of the President 1964. It was to be a struggle with Johnson, and Goldwater disliked Johnson (the biggest faker in the United States was the way he would describe the President of the United States at the San Francisco Convention); but on the other hand, there was his duty to the conservative cause -- and the Goldwater volunteers, an entirely new group in politics, might drift away in four years. Exactly 10 months after announcing his candidacy, Goldwater was buried in a landslide by President Lyndon B. Johnson, winning 38.5 percent of the vote to LBJs 61.1 percent, with 52 electoral votes to Johnsons 486 electoral votes. Goldwater carried only 6 states -- South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and his home state of Arizona. We would have lost even if Abraham Lincoln had come back and campaigned with us, said Goldwater after the loss. He maintained later he would have won the election if the nation had not been in a state of extended grief following the assassination of Kennedy, and that it was simply not ready for a third President in only 14 months. https://youtube/watch?v=--375PlwiCw
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 19:52:35 +0000
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