Barry Goldwater's 1964 Acceptance Speech of Nomination for President

8/16/23 update of the post of 7/23/16:

Barry Goldwater really walked into it. If he had avoided the use of the words "extremism", he might have made it impossible to typecast him as someone to fear.

I note in the comment section that people approve of this phrasing. But the phrasing was easy to attack and mischaracterize. That's why you have to be careful about how you phrase the things you say. This sounds like Goldwater was praising "extremism", and criticizing "moderation". Very easy to attack, so LBJ produced the "Daisy commercial".

 



What can make it so easy for the leftists to attack is to give them the tools to do it with?



the original post follows:

It is remarkably modest speech that got mischaracterized as the ranting of a mad man.

Why?

A couple lines that made it sound like he favored extremism over moderation.  That's it. 
On the basis of this, and perhaps a few other quotes like it, LBJ was able to win in a landslide.

The lesson?

A modest guess:  Few people could have watched this and concluded that they were witnessing the rantings of a madman.  The only way they could have been alarmed is by what they were told to be alarmed about.

With that in mind, I can only conclude that if people are as gullible with respect to the news media as they were in 1964, Trump may well meet the same fate.

But Reagan did win in 1980.  He won by saying many of the same things Goldwater did here.  The lesson there is that it can be done.