Barry Goldwater

As a biography of Goldwater, it doesn’t get much better than the Post’s obituary of 1994, which calls him a “GOP hero.”

The blog “Piece of Mind” recollects Goldwater’s social views as delivered to Congress in 1981, shedding light on some of the philosophies that Senator John McCain would later call a “breeding ground” for President Reagan’s rise in the 1980s.

The Goldwater Institute is a think tank founded in 1988, eight years before Goldwater’s death. On its site you’ll find information on the Institute’s social and political projects along with insight into the Goldwater era and the impact of its legacy. 

Watch a video outlining the work and mission of the Goldwater Institute.

Goldwater’s think tank awarded the Goldwater Award to author Ayan Hirsi Ali for her New York Times bestseller, Infidel, a groundbreaking work on the plight of the Muslim woman.

Harold Meyerson’s op-ed in the Washington Post this October recalled the Goldwater legacy and the GOP’s transformation.

You’ll also find Goldwater’s 1964 acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination at the Post site. The event made the cover of Time.

As the New York Times explains in this obituary of John E. Grenier, a key player in the Goldwater presidential campaign, one of the Goldwater camp’s aims was to “reject the legacy of the New Deal and oppose further concentration of federal power.”

Goldwater had an avid and public interest in UFOs, but he wasn’t the only one: Recently, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker that Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich and President Ronald Reagan shared the same interest. Perhaps it was this hobby that led the Democrat camp to counter Goldwater’s campaign slogan, “In your heart you know he’s right,” with, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.”

Also in the New Yorker is Louis Menand’s apt analysis of the Goldwater school of thought, centered around a book on Goldwater that was published in 2001. As Menand points out, Goldwater’s loss in 1964 led to Johnson’s landslide election victory, still the U.S. record. Johnson won 61 percent of the popular vote. But that hasn’t stopped the Goldwater message from permeating the conservative movement.

Goldwater wrote several books, most notably 1960’s The Conscience of a Conservative, a springboard to Goldwater’s policies as campaigned in the 1964 election.