>Goldwater was riding on- and
>pandering to- a single issue - Southern racism and the Federal
>government meddling with it (which is one coin with two faces since the
>Civil War).
That's not at all fair to Goldwater or many of his followers - and I say this as someone who was a conservative in the early 1970s. Yeah, sure there was an element of cracker ressentiment, but there were also principled libertarians who really believed in the liberating beauties of the free market. The genius of the Republicans was to join that marginal agenda to the broader one fueled by white guy rage.
Doug