In 1964, with the support of ultra-conservative groups like the Eagle Forum, Barry Goldwater defeated Nelson Rockefeller in the Republican primary and became the Republican nominee for President. Some of the highlights of Goldwater's platform include reinstating segregation, repealing the Civil Rights Act, and possibly launching a preventative nuclear strike against the Soviet Union rather than retain nuclear weapons for solely defensive purposes. Barry Goldwater's extreme positions were met with skepticism from the American people, who voted in a landslide election for incumbent Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson.
Why bring up an election of a half-century ago? The relative positions of candidates in the 1964 election closely mirror those of the 2016 election. Right-wing extremist outsider grabs the ultra-conservative torch and carries it all the way to the Republican convention; Democratic insider easily captures nomination and ignores left-wing concerns about foreign policy and insider status. Early polls showed President Johnson with an insurmountable, fifty point-lead over Goldwater, and that lead would only shrink over time. Early liberal criticism over the Vietnam War was easily washed away by the central point of the Johnson campaign: Goldwater would be way worse.
Having quashed the chance of a progressive desertion, Johnson simultaneously targeted the American policy elite and the middle American moderate. Goldwater's catchphrase, "In your heart, you know he's right," bit back at him with Johnson's parody, "In your gut, you know he's nuts," and, "In your heart, you know he might," in reference to the use of nuclear weapons. Television advertisements showed nuclear catastrophes and sad Republicans defecting to the Democrats, exposing the well-founded fears that Goldwater had simply no idea what he was doing.
In the end, Goldwater didn't win a single state outside of the Deep South other than his home-state of Arizona. The insurgent conservative amounted to nothing in the history of American political life.
Paving a path of destruction through the Republican Party establishment, Donald Trump has achieved the same victory of the Goldwater campaign. Not only are their relations to the party and victories comparable, but their constituencies are the same. Goldwater's status as a Jewish politician made him have some trouble with the traditional evangelical basis of the Republican conservatives, as has Trump's perceived lack of any moral basis. Goldwater's nonsensical rants concerning the use of nuclear weapons and the constitutional right to discriminate mirror Trump's strong-man approach to foreign policy and anti-immigrant bigotry, respectively.
And the Democratic establishment has noticed.
More than just treating Trump like an idiot, the Clinton campaign has begun to paint the picture of a poor-tempered, divisive, megalomaniac who not only is completely out of his depth, but who is an actual joke. Advertisements show Trump inciting violence against protesters out of annoyance, poking fun at the "great deal-maker's" inability to negotiate with opposition. Others show prominent Republican leaders denouncing their leader, including former nominee Mitt Romney, all three Bushes, and Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, revealing the divisive nature of Trump's extremism. The closest to an acknowledgement of Trump's actual character comes with advertisements showing his shady business tactics such as supporting the real estate collapse of 2008 for his own personal interests.
The similarities are so close that the old advertisement from 1964, Confessions of a Republican, detailing a long-time Republican's defection from the absurdity of Goldwater, has resurfaced as a criticism of Trump. Popular momentum and scare tactics make it seem like Donald Trump could be the next president of the United States, but, if history is any guide, it is more likely that he will only be the next victim of the American political machine.
