They’re desperately trying to keep the people
in the galleries quiet
because this looks like this is going off the rails.
This is like the Conservative Woodstock.
A new deal for the American People
Extremism in the defense of liberty
There is no substitute for victory
The United States of America
The drama of the 1964 convention starts with 1952.
Conservatives were absolutely certain that the convention had been stolen from them.
They're convinced that they have to take back the party from what they call the Wall Street Republicans, the New York King Makers.
And they back this guy named Barry Goldwater,
who is this cowboy Conservative from Arizona
over the moderate Nelson Rockefeller.
I’m returning here to San Francisco today
to win in the contest for the nomination of my party.
By the time that the convention rolls around,
Barry Goldwater really seems to have sewn
up the nomination, but the establishment will not let well enough alone.
They're trying, even at the last minute at the convention
to run one of their own,
a blue blood governor of Pennsylvania named William Warren Scranton.
A lot of the journalists couldn't believe
that this fellow out of Arizona with these
strong opinions was going to get the nomination.
Goldwater is far to the right of the mainstream of the Republican Party.
He votes against the Civil Rights Act.
He really seems like he's very reckless when it comes to nuclear war.
We want Barry! We want Barry!
The Goldwater campaign is absolutely convinced
that unless they basically run this convention
with military discipline, the Eastern establishment
will steal the Republican Party from the conservative base.
If there is a victory, it’s not a victory
for Barry Goldwater;
it’s a victory for the mainstream of Republican thinking.
We were all prepped for weeks in advance of
the convention. We had the 36 hotels where
delegates were staying. Each one had a radio
transmitter right to headquarters.
We knew that people would pull the plug on speakers—on microphones.
We had backup for all that stuff.
They're not going to give any quarter when
it comes to any platform planks, any procedural rules.
They're just going to vote down the
line for Goldwater.
Now the liberal side who are horrified that
the public is going to see the Republicans
as captive of extremists decide that they're
going to put forward three platform planks:
one promising to uphold the Civil Rights law,
another to denounce extremism, whether it
comes from the Ku Klux Klan or the Communist Party, and another denouncing racism.
They give these very soaring speeches and the Goldwater delegates just consider this an insult.
So when the famous Rockefeller speech occurs,
the galleries erupted.
The Republican Party is in real danger of
subversion
by a radical, well-financed, highly disciplined majority.
May we have order.
May we order so that the governor may be heard.
It was great drama.
Here is the Governor
of the State of New York,  who had just been a serious candidate for president,
a millionaire,
billionaire, being booed by his party.
Rockefeller wants this to happen.
He wants the extremism of the Goldwater forces to be revealed for all to see.
None of us knew how important television was.
Americans were seeing these screaming people.
At a certain point things are so violent - the
passions against the media are so great,
they literally start grabbing the spindles that
are holding these glass booths for the networks
and shaking them.
I grew up in the age of silent films.
The first taste of radio any of us had was Roosevelt's Fireside Chats.
But television hits the emotion.
Mr. President, Barry Goldwater...
It's the job of the nominee traditionally
to give this unifying speech,
to kind of usher all that rancor under the bridge.
But Barry Goldwater is so sick of these snooty, arrogant, Eastern elites
telling him what to do and
treating his delegates like they're, you know, children,
that he decides, "the hell with it."
That’s the context for the most famous line of the convention.
I would remind you, that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
The impact of the convention in 1964 was the
moderates in the Republican Party were right.
Barry Goldwater was seen as a dangerous extremist.
The convention pretty much killed us.
I mean I had a sinking feeling that it was pretty much over.
It was mitigated by the roar of
the crowds, but that's very misleading.
We lost by 15 million votes in the actual election,
but I'd say because of Goldwater's breaking the ice, so to speak,
the conservative movement became very important within the Republican party.
After Goldwater, we went on to Reagan.
This idea that the Republican Party is fighting
a civil war between a conservative base and
a moderate establishment endures today.
The Jeb Bushes of this world are like the
old Rockefeller-Scrantons.
The difference is that I don't remember Barry Goldwater ever doing all of the nasty things that Trump has said.
Even though a guy who is seen as the right-wing insurgent lives in a high-rise on Fifth Avenue,
and has many positions that betray Conservative orthodoxy,
Stylistically, the template is still there:
the idea that you have this small band of string pullers, and the true authentic conservative red meat base.
It seems like even with the craziness of this election, that basic architecture refuses to die.
