Chieftain1776
01-17-2009, 09:27 AM
Recently finished reading "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of a Consensus" which although written by a liberal was an amazing look at how conservatives rose to control the party apparatus and nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964. I placed it on the Liberty Books List (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=129762) and definitely recommend it. I found the following quotes pretty interesting and hopeful:
Pg 108 ' “A flock of little Buckleys now torment social scientists in colleges large and small,” wrote an observer. They read twice as much as anyone else, the enemy's ideas and their own, delighting in dangling bait before unsuspecting peers who didn't know their assumptions required arguments, then slaughtering them in debate.'
pg 473 When ...one of nation's most respected liberal dailies, sent out a team of reporters after the election of a multi-part series to investigate “Who were these people who took over the Republican Party,” the reporters wrote as if describing Earth after a surprise Martian attack....In articles like “MIDWEST WAS FERTILE GROUND FOR EXTREMIST INFILTRATION”....the paper covered a rogues gallery of conspirators..who had labored together “to impose its will on one of the nation's two great parties.”
pg 473 As for the record 3.9 million Americans who actively worked for the Goldwater campaign in some capacity (Johnson had half as man, from a pool half again as large) –they might as well have retreated to the planet from whence they came. In spaceships. Yet that didn't explain the fact that, by report of Johnson field men, automobile bumpers supporting Goldwater continued to outnumber those backing LBJ on American highway by a ratios of 10 to 1. Perhaps it is understanding that reporters missed the story. There had never been anything like it in their lifetimes.
After the '64 defeat the Goldwater wing then won more house and senate seats in 1966 and then set up the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Pg 108 ' “A flock of little Buckleys now torment social scientists in colleges large and small,” wrote an observer. They read twice as much as anyone else, the enemy's ideas and their own, delighting in dangling bait before unsuspecting peers who didn't know their assumptions required arguments, then slaughtering them in debate.'
pg 473 When ...one of nation's most respected liberal dailies, sent out a team of reporters after the election of a multi-part series to investigate “Who were these people who took over the Republican Party,” the reporters wrote as if describing Earth after a surprise Martian attack....In articles like “MIDWEST WAS FERTILE GROUND FOR EXTREMIST INFILTRATION”....the paper covered a rogues gallery of conspirators..who had labored together “to impose its will on one of the nation's two great parties.”
pg 473 As for the record 3.9 million Americans who actively worked for the Goldwater campaign in some capacity (Johnson had half as man, from a pool half again as large) –they might as well have retreated to the planet from whence they came. In spaceships. Yet that didn't explain the fact that, by report of Johnson field men, automobile bumpers supporting Goldwater continued to outnumber those backing LBJ on American highway by a ratios of 10 to 1. Perhaps it is understanding that reporters missed the story. There had never been anything like it in their lifetimes.
After the '64 defeat the Goldwater wing then won more house and senate seats in 1966 and then set up the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.