Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

by Rick Perlstein

Rockefeller’s July 14 statement placed the responsibility at Barry Goldwater’s feet. The Republican Party, it began, “is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed, and highly disciplined minority.” They were “wholly alien to the broad middle course that accommodates the mainstream of Republican principle.” They “have no program for the Republican party or the American people except distrust, disunity, and the ultimate destruction of the confidence of the people in themselves. They are purveyors of hate and distrust in a time when, as never before, the need of the world is for love and understanding.” The conservatives “have no concern with and offer no solution to the problems of chronic unemployment, of education and training, of housing, of racial injustice and strife.”