Immediately after the 1964 election, most observers thought Goldwater’s movement was cooked. Instead, the 1964 Republican campaign marked the start of the process of creating a coherent narrative that could attract voters by selling them on the corollary to the American paradox. Over the next fifteen years, Movement Conservatives would argue that the claims of minorities and women for access to opportunity were destroying individualism and the way of life it represented. That narrative would enable them to move from the political margins to the White House.
