Goldwater Takes the Helm

Goldwater’s ascent to the Republican Party’s presidential nomination was historic, but the major political drama of the summer took place in Congress. After eighty-three days of debate, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed in the Senate on June 19 with a vote of 73 to 27.¹² The vote resulted from months of advocacy by Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey and his floor manager. The negotiations resulted in Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois agreeing to support the bill, moving for cloture to suspend the southern Democrat-led filibuster to allow for a vote and working to get the necessary Republican votes.¹³ The six Republican senators who broke from the party majority to oppose the bill were Norris H. Cotton of New Hampshire, Goldwater, Bourke B. Hickenlooper of Iowa, Edwin L. Mechem of New Mexico, Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, and John Tower of Texas.¹⁴ Goldwater, the presumed nominee, said he had voted against the bill on constitutional grounds, fearing that Titles II and VII, which addressed public accommodations and equal employment, respectively, were unconstitutional. He also argued that to make the law enforceable, the federal government would have to create a federal police force and a surveillance culture that would threaten to destroy free society. Overlooking the discrimination and extralegal violence that denied African Americans freedom in the South, Goldwater said he feared that white southerners would experience tyranny under the civil rights law. He explained, “Neighbors spying on neighbors, worker spying on workers, businessmen spying on businessmen, where those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force and an ‘informer’ psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society.”¹⁵

Upon the bill’s passage, Rockefeller made a public statement praising Congress and the Republican Party for their role in the passage of the bill, which he called a “major milestone on the road to freedom … charted by the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln and broadened by the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960.” Rockefeller then looked to the impending Republican National Convention and said it was “inconceivable” that the party could nominate Goldwater as its standard-bearer when he voted with southern Democrats and “abandoned the Republican Party on the most fundamental issue of our time.” “Twice he supported the move to sidetrack the bill to the Eastland Committee,” noted Rockefeller, voted against closing debate, and voted “twenty-three times to weaken the bill before its final passage in the Senate.” While Rockefeller called on the party to support Scranton and the advancement of civil rights, he was again outside the mainstream of his party.¹⁶ Despite Dirksen denouncing Goldwater’s position as extreme on the Senate floor, for example, he refused to help moderate Republicans who hoped to derail Goldwater’s nomination because, as Robert Novak explained, “he most certainly could live with Goldwater—civil rights bill or no civil rights bill.”¹⁷ With the convention imminent, Dirksen was prepared to look beyond Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act and so too was Goldwater.

Goldwater and his surrogates sought a conflict-free and tightly managed process to draft the 1964 platform. The document would reflect his views but do so in a way that would lessen the opportunity for moderates to make an issue of the platform as Rockefeller did in 1960. Scranton supporters hoped to hinder the platform writing process by drawing attention to Goldwater’s minority position on civil rights, among other issues, but most Republican leaders were prepared to approve a platform that satisfied Goldwater. On Monday, July 6, the Republican Party’s Committee on Resolutions, otherwise known as the platform committee, was scheduled to meet in San Francisco. In advance of the proceedings, Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and a dozen moderate committee members discussed strategies to disrupt the meetings and possibly Goldwater’s nomination. They hoped to start a platform fight by calling for the adoption of liberal planks that Goldwater would deem unacceptable. Meanwhile, Congressman Melvin Laird of Wisconsin, chair of the committee, was well aware of the planks that moderates wanted in the platform and attempted to incorporate them into the working draft to avoid conflict.

In June, Laird told the Overseas Press Club that the plank on civil rights should contain support for congressional Republicans who voted for the civil rights bill and a call for “prompt and effective implementation of this legislation.” After listening to the press conference, Rockefeller adviser Roswell Perkins informed the governor that it would be difficult to wage a floor fight based on such a civil rights plank.¹⁸ Although not as conservative as Goldwater, Laird was one of his earliest supporters for the nomination in the House of Representatives. He perceived his role as a mediator who would oversee the writing of a platform that suited Goldwater’s style and tone but was mainstream enough that any Republican could approve of it. Like Goldwater, Laird preferred short, general platforms rather than the long, detailed documents that platforms had become.¹⁹ Despite Laird’s efforts to assuage moderates before the convention, it was clear to everyone in attendance at the hearings in the Colonial Ballroom of San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel that the platform committee planned to write a document that reflected Goldwater’s views. Goldwater and his staff had no intention of the committee drafting a platform he could not run on, but he wanted to exert his power in as quiet a manner as possible. It was a well-played tactic; moderates like Scranton and Lodge were soon frustrated when they realized that the conservative committee members planned to be the picture of politeness and conciliation as they listened to and summarily rejected all of the moderates’ testimony and proposals.

The testimony of civil rights activists such as Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dick Gregory drew attention to the party’s divide over civil rights while they advocated for a civil rights plank that rivaled the 1960 plank. Wilkins praised congressional Republicans for their critical support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which had been signed by Johnson five days prior; he also noted that the bill mirrored much of the key components of the Republicans’ 1960 civil rights plank. The NAACP executive secretary said that Republicans should not only herald the party’s vital role, but it should also write a civil rights plank that was “specific and forward-looking” like the previous one. Wilkins was sure to remind the GOP of his heritage: “Once again, as it did in 1860, the Republican party must speak more loudly and more authoritatively than any one man or clique on the plain duty of the government of a free people to protect freedom for human beings.” Now that the bill had been signed, Wilkins called on the party to write a plank that endorsed the Civil Rights Act and its constitutionality and included commitments to “vigorous enforcement, adequate appropriations to insure an effective and dedicated staff, and particularly to provide for the expansion of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.”²⁰ In an effort to slow the transformation of the GOP as it looked to gain strength in the South, Wilkins reminded the committee members that the Republican Party had been blocked from the South because of its principled commitment to human rights and opposition to slavery. He then said it would be ironic if Republicans made the South a “genuine two-party system” by abandoning “the very principles upon which the party was founded.” Wilkins also expressed his dismay that Black Republicans were prohibited from attending the Mississippi state convention, and as a result, it and several other southern states would have “lily-white” delegations. His final request of the committee was to urge the party to “refuse to recognize or to seat any state delegation chosen under a system of racial exclusion.” “There is no room and certainly no future in our country,” warned Wilkins, “for a political party built on racial exclusion or one captured and dominated by elements which advocate for such a policy.”²¹

In addition to challenging the Republican Party to maintain its commitment to the protection of civil rights, Wilkins critiqued Goldwater’s opposition to federal civil rights legislation, which he considered a life-and-death issue. In response to Goldwater’s argument that the new law would result in a “police state,” Wilkins said that Mississippi was already a “genuine police state.”²² For Wilkins, recent events in Mississippi proved the futility of Goldwater’s argument that civil rights should be a state matter. For the past two weeks, the entire nation had been reminded of the justice African Americans experienced in Mississippi, explained Wilkins, when three civil rights workers—James Chaney of Mississippi and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner of New York—had disappeared on June 21, 1964 and were feared dead. Wilkins informed the committee that seven NAACP board members who were touring Mississippi had sent a telegram to Goldwater the previous night to detail the intimidation and terrorism faced by Blacks in the state and emphasize the consequence of his position for African Americans. The NAACP executive secretary also refuted opponents of the Civil Rights Act, including Goldwater, Alabama governor George Wallace, and Mississippi governor Paul Johnson, who said it was unconstitutional and encouraged people to defy it. Wilkins’s speech reminded the committee members that the presumed nominee of their party had opposed a bill that could save lives by protecting African Americans from unrepentant racists.²³

Rockefeller did not dominate the headlines as he did four years before, but he did speak before the committee in support of moderates’ most controversial positions: the inclusion of planks affirming the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act and a firm rejection of extremism. Rockefeller called for a platform that credited the passage of the Civil Rights Act to the moral leadership of the Republican Party.²⁴ He also challenged the committee to face “extremism” on the left and right, which he called the “greatest crisis” of the party’s history. Rockefeller’s statement failed to induce an emotional response from Goldwater supporters on the committee, who had been instructed to not make a scene. Instead, they politely stood and applauded Rockefeller along with the Scranton supporters. After Rockefeller’s appearance, Rhodes and Tower described his testimony as “very moderate” and agreeable except for a few points.²⁵

Rockefeller spoke in favor of a plank that called the Civil Rights Act constitutional, but prominent moderates had begun to back down on this point. Laird opposed the idea of the platform committee stating that the new civil rights law was constitutional because, he said, the platform committee was not the Supreme Court. Ohio congressman William M. McCulloch, who served as House manager of the civil rights bill and rallied support among House Republicans, joined Laird’s attempt to dodge the issue. It was a major blow to Scranton supporters, who hoped to get committee members like McCulloch to join their efforts to oppose Goldwater, but instead, McCulloch said it was not the committee’s role to state whether legislation was constitutional. Instead, he said, the committee should write a plank pledging to enforce the new law, which Goldwater said was acceptable.²⁶ Many party moderates and supporters of the Civil Rights Act refused to join the efforts of Scranton; instead, they decided to entrust the maintenance of the Republican Party’s commitment to civil rights to Goldwater and his supporters. Despite avid denials by some and determined displays of ignorance by others, the Republican Party was undergoing a transformation evidenced by the choices of leaders like McCulloch. Scranton and his associates quieted their calls on the issue of constitutionality once McCulloch opposed it.

Despite Goldwater’s dominance over the platform committee, there were signs that southern Republicans were still unhappy with their predicament in San Francisco. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that Goldwater supporters “feel like the faithful wife abandoned just as her husband becomes a success” because the Republican platform would contain a plank in support of the new Civil Rights Act.²⁷ Evans and Novak wrote that upon their arrival in San Francisco, southern Republicans were disappointed to learn that Laird had already written the platform, with a plank pledging support of the Civil Rights Act. They most likely hoped for a plank on civil rights similar to the “Goldwater plank” in the Nevada GOP platform, which echoed statements made by Goldwater. The Nevada platform plank stated that “human relations” could not be legislated and that the solution for discrimination “lies in the individual conscience … of every American.” It also stated that remarkable progress had been made in Nevada without government intervention and that such legislation was not necessary “at the state or federal level.”²⁸ Such a plank, however, was not to be written by Laird, nor did Goldwater demand it. To the dismay of Goldwater’s supporters who favored segregation, Goldwater planned to allow a plank that expressed dutiful support for the Civil Rights Act to neutralize the issue moderates hoped to exploit to their advantage. Evans and Novak reported that Goldwater was determined to support the Civil Rights Act because it could help ensure his nomination.²⁹ Accounts of the platform hearings that focus on the Goldwater perspective, including the senator’s 1979 memoir With No Apologies, F. Clifton White’s Suite 3505, and political scientist John H. Kessel’s The Goldwater Coalition do not discuss Goldwater’s decision to allow a civil rights plank in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.³⁰ According to White, the first objective of the convention was to write a “conservative Republican platform,” but Goldwater, with an eye toward unity, told Rhodes and Tower to make sure that the platform could please “practically all members of the party along with Democrats and independents.”³¹ Goldwater’s goal to appease as many people as possible angered some of his ardent supporters but ensured that the party would write a weaker and less specific plank.

Goldwater’s plan to minimize his minority position on the Civil Rights Act worked well until the issue became a point of contention during his much-awaited testimony before the committee on Friday, July 10, 1964. Amid enthusiastic applause, Goldwater told the committee and those in attendance that he sought stronger opposition to communism abroad and a “minimum of government” at home. The loudest demonstrations erupted when he called for firmer foreign policy and for respect for whites as well as Negroes.³² While Goldwater’s testimony resembled a nomination convention speech—he was interrupted by applause forty-one times during his testimony—the question-and-answer session led to a few uncomfortable moments.³³ Gordon A. Parker, a resident of Washington, D.C. and the lone Black committee member, interrogated Goldwater on his civil rights stance, questioning Goldwater’s ability to defend the Civil Rights Act “consistently, conscientiously and in good faith” after vigorously opposing it. Goldwater replied, “Well, sir, when you use that argument you are questioning my honesty and I should resent it but I won’t. I’ll try to explain this again.” Parker denied that he was questioning Goldwater’s integrity; instead, he said he hoped Goldwater would be frank. Goldwater was not appeased; his anger was palpable: “You are questioning my integrity but I’ll overlook it. I’ve answered the question once; I’ll answer it again, by reminding you that when the President takes an oath of office he takes in that oath a pledge to uphold all laws. And I have said time and time and time again and I say again, even though I was in the minority on the civil rights bill because I felt, and I still feel, that two of the titles are unconstitutional—and they will be tested by the court for final decision, not by me or this party—I will uphold that because it’s the voice of the majority.”³⁴ Goldwater went on to discuss his lifelong opposition to segregation in his hometown and again vowed to enforce the law if he were president, but he also said that discrimination was a problem that could not be solved by laws; it must be solved in the hearts of all citizens. The senator often pointed to his time in Phoenix as proof he supported civil rights, but not everyone remembered him playing a role in desegregation. In July 1964, Reverend George Brooks, president of the Maricopa County NAACP, criticized Goldwater and his supporters’ claims that he played a major role in the desegregation of Phoenix. “Goldwater misrepresented the facts,” explained Brooks. “We can find no evidence to support Sen. Goldwater’s extravagant claims concerning his contribution to civil rights achievements in Arizona.”³⁵

Parker expressed skepticism shared by many Americans who doubted that Goldwater would enforce the civil rights act as president. A Harris survey from that month revealed that when respondents were asked, “Do you think Senator Goldwater is for or against … full use of federal power for Negro rights?” the vast majority of Americans surveyed (81 percent) said Goldwater was against full use of federal power.³⁶ As Goldwater pointed out impatiently, he had assured numerous people on several occasions that he would enforce the law if he were elected, but his steady public pronouncements against the civil rights bill while campaigning gave a different impression. The press was divided on the significance of Goldwater allowing or pledging to back a plank in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Evans and Novak were unimpressed by Goldwater’s agreement to support the civil rights plank, which they called the “weakest Republican civil rights plank in memory.”³⁷ Meanwhile, the conservative Los Angeles Times, which printed an editorial on July 9 stating that the Republican Party had nothing to be ashamed of when it came to its civil rights record, dismissed Parker as a “Baiter of Goldwater.”³⁸ Ultimately, Goldwater’s inability to convince people that he would enforce civil rights to the best of his ability was integral to his electoral strength in the South.³⁹ His performance allowed him to align himself with the mainstream of the party while maintaining his voting base in the South.

A Civil Rights Plank for Goldwater’s GOP

Indeed, the presence of the white backlash tactic was felt all last week as the platform committee drafted the weakest Republican civil rights plank in memory.

—Rowland Evans and Robert Novak

The only two Negroes in the whole U.S. who are going to vote for Goldwater are his chauffeur and his maid. And even they are trying to figure out a way to double-cross him when they draw the curtains in the voting booth.

—Dick Gregory

Goldwater supporters referred to the Republican platform as a “consensus platform,” but the tone reflected Goldwater’s domination and a significant shift from previous party platforms.⁴⁰ In a section titled “Discord and Discontent,” the platform attacked the presidential administration’s record on a range of issues including civil rights and labor disputes. On civil rights, it stated, “This Administration has exploited interracial tensions by extravagant campaign promises, without fulfillment, playing on the just aspirations of the minority groups, encouraging disorderly and lawless elements, and ineffectually administering the laws.” The platform stated that there should be a congressional investigation into the abuse of power shown by federal departments and agencies, the Department of Justice in particular, which had used “police tactics” to achieve “partisan political, economic, and legislative goals.”⁴¹ The federal government’s intervention in the steel price dispute of 1962 was offered as an example, but the most publicized episodes of federal intervention in this period were the Justice Department’s involvement in desegregating schools in the South. After great consternation in response to McCulloch’s proposal that the civil rights plank include a promise of “vigorous enforcement” of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the platform promised “implementation” and “execution” instead because Tower said the words enforcement harkened back to Reconstruction-era federal intervention and “would badly hurt Sen. Goldwater in the South and undercut the ‘Southern Strategy’ of the conservatives.”⁴² The platform would, however, placate those who felt the federal government had unfairly aided African Americans by declaring opposition to “federally sponsored inverse discrimination, whether by the shifting of jobs or the abandonment of neighborhood schools for reasons of race.” Rockefeller called the platform draft an “utterly inadequate document” that failed to represent the majority of the Republican Party on nuclear weapons, civil rights, and extremism. Furthermore, for the Republican Party to “retreat from its historic stand for civil rights,” explained Rockefeller, “in order to please a narrow, doctrinaire minority [was] equally inconceivable.”⁴³ The New York Times also called the platform a substantial break with the party’s past in an editorial. “The party of Abraham Lincoln is now cautious on civil rights, criticizing the Justice Department for ‘police state tactics’ despite mounting evidence that some states cannot or will not control lawlessness and anarchy.”⁴⁴ The “consensus platform” had put moderates and racial liberals on notice.

The NAACP found nothing to recommend in what it called the Republicans’ “states’ rights” civil rights plank. Rather than call for federal action, the organization noted that Republicans adopted a platform that “called for ‘maximum restraint’ of Federal ‘intrusions into matters more productively left to the individual.’ ” The plank was even more notable for Wilkins because it came shortly after the suspected murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Leaving human rights to states like Mississippi, in his estimation, resulted in “violence and death.” What was called a “consensus platform” included a much-diminished position on federal civil rights intervention. During his testimony, Wilkins called for the party to write a plank that equaled the temper of the previous plank, which concluded with a pledge to implement “the full use of the power, resources and leadership of the federal government to eliminate discrimination.” Rather than write a plank that promised to build on the new landmark legislation, the new plank lacked a commitment to emphasizing the role of the federal government in civil rights.⁴⁵

Although moderates were given some concessions, tensions remained high between the Scranton and Goldwater factions after the platform committee’s all-night session to approve the platform. For example, the platform’s executive committee included “intact or in modified versions the Scranton language on the United Nations, foreign aid, Cuba, medical care for the aged, Social Security, agriculture and urban needs” but rejected planks that were in direct opposition to Goldwater’s views.⁴⁶ There had been a single roll-call vote on an amendment to the civil rights plank, which was presented by Joseph Carlino, the speaker of the New York assembly who had advocated for Rockefeller’s fair housing legislation. The proposed plank pledged support for the application of the voting section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in state as well as federal elections and would broaden the executive order against discrimination in federally aided housing. The committee rejected the amendment in a vote of 68 to 30. With this loss, the Scranton supporters, led by Senator Scott, issued a minority report expressing their disapproval of the platform and announced their plan to wage a floor battle at the convention on three specific issues. On the second day of the convention, delegates would hear amendments calling for a strengthened civil rights plank, a plank that denounced extremists within the party, and a reaffirmation of party support for sole-presidential control of nuclear weapons. Romney also arranged to present his own amendments on civil rights and extremism that were designed to be less contentious than those in the minority report. There was little chance of changing any minds at a convention teeming with Goldwater supporters, but Scranton’s allies pressed on.

The futility of the Scrantonite endeavor was most apparent not in the dedication of Goldwater supporters but in the lack of support among party regulars and moderates who were determined to maintain order at the convention by approving a weakened civil rights plank. For example, Laird told the press that he predicted the amendment would be beaten on the floor because the platform committee’s civil rights plank had the support of McCulloch and Dirksen, who led the effort to write the 1964 Civil Rights Act.⁴⁷ Scranton and Scott, along with other moderate-to-liberal Republicans, also lacked the backing of prominent peers such as former national chairman Thruston Morton. When they most needed his support, Morton told the press that Goldwater would maintain Eisenhower’s party line and would prove to the public that he was not the “17th-century monster that some people have painted him.”⁴⁸

A “Common Zeal” for Civil Rights

This party is at the crossroads. The Party of Lincoln has become the party of extremists, racists, crackpots and rightists. What we have experienced at this convention television onlookers could not believe.

—Sandy F. Ray, New York Delegate

The floor of this convention seems like downtown Birmingham.

—Black Delegate

The convention revealed that the Republican Party’s embrace of opponents of civil rights legislation and racial conservatism more generally had changed the nature of the party; it was now newly hostile toward lifelong African American Republicans who had advocated for civil rights.⁴⁹ Goldwater’s supporters, most notably US senator Carl T. Curtis of Nebraska, squelched an effort by Scrantonites to contest the exclusion of George W. Lee of Memphis from Tennessee’s delegation on the first day of the convention. The perennial convention delegate since the 1930s—whose teenage daughter, Gilda, even served as a page at the 1960 convention—was unable to be a delegate that year because Tennessee’s Shelby County Republican organization changed the election rules temporarily so they could have their state’s first all-white delegation in fifty years. This was the same Lee, who at the end of 1962, sent an impassioned letter to Taft and Rockefeller stating that the Republican resurgence in Tennessee was the result of the Ku Klux Klan and other racists co-opting the party.⁵⁰ Lee’s exclusion was even more remarkable because he made a memorable speech seconding the nomination of Taft in 1952. In response to this controversy, delegate Newton I. Steers Jr. of Maryland offered a resolution that would have denied the admittance of state delegations who could not prove they selected delegates without discrimination based on race, color, creed, or national origin.⁵¹ Adopting the resolution would, as its backers argued, prevent practices and procedures that discriminated against Blacks. Bennett Webster Jr. of Iowa seconded the motion, stating that there was evidence that “there are forces at work in this country to expel Negroes from positions of importance and leadership in our Party.” A person on the convention floor yelled in response, “Yeah, and next convention there won’t be no niggers to expel!” Curtis opposed the resolution. Rather than begin his speech by stating his procedural challenge, he played to the crowd and generated excited approval of his effort to block a resolution intended to defend inclusivity in the GOP. Curtis shouted, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the hope of mankind. We are here to adopt a platform and nominate the next President of the United States,” which drew cheers from the audience. The New Yorker’s Richard Harris observed that Curtis’s statement elicited the “first great roar of the Convention.”⁵² Ultimately, Lee’s appeal failed; of the 1,308 delegates, 15 were African American, and for the first time in the history of the Republican National Committee, not one of the South’s 279 delegates was Black. The number of Black delegates at the convention was at a record low.⁵³

Scrantonites would get additional opportunities to voice their concerns at the convention, but Goldwater surrogates ensured that moderates had, at best, little chance to make an impact at the event and, at worst, an occasion to reveal their diminished stature in the party. On the second night of the convention, Scranton supporters waged their final battle against the platform and the impending nomination of Goldwater. Scott filed the minority report with three amendments to the platform. It was unusual for such a report and subsequent debate to take place before the delegates. Tom Wicker noted that Scrantonites had Goldwater and his staff to thank for allowing them an opportunity to force their amendments to be heard on the convention floor. As a result, “instead of having its platform proposals ignored—the usual situation—the minority finds itself this year unhappily smothered by the generosity of the majority.”⁵⁴ Goldwater directed White to tell the delegates they were to reject all of the amendments regardless of their content to demonstrate the overriding control of conservatives at the convention. Although White followed Goldwater’s orders, White also ensured that the “battle” would take place after prime time on the East Coast to reduce the viewing audience as much as possible. He rescheduled Eisenhower’s speech to push the debate into the late hours of the night, and for good measure, he planned—to the almost certain dismay of delegates and audience members alike—a reading of the entire platform by committee members.⁵⁵ After the ninety-minute reading of the platform that had both delegates and audience members milling about the hall to stave off boredom, the Scrantonites got their floor debate, which began as midnight approached on the East Coast.

With the odds against them, moderate Scranton supporters launched the Republican Party’s last opportunity to adopt a civil rights plank in 1964 that matched the plank of 1960. Ten Republicans, five proponents and five opponents, came forward to discuss the merits of the Scott amendment on civil rights. Although the original plank called for “full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” it omitted any acknowledgment that Republicans in both houses of Congress had been indispensable to the passage of the bill.⁵⁶ Roscoe Drummond of the Washington Post reported that Goldwater had “not allow[ed] the platform to praise four-fifths of the Republican Congressmen and five-sixths of the Republican Senators who voted for the civil rights bill which Goldwater opposed.”⁵⁷ The Scott amendment sought to reverse this silence while it invoked the party’s legacy as the Party of Lincoln and called for the Republican Party to become a champion and standard-bearer for civil rights. Furthermore, the Scott amendment called for the reinforcement of the Civil Rights Act such as the appointment of federal judges “devoted to protecting the constitutional rights of the citizens” as the means for ensuring the enforcement of the law. In this spirit, the amendment stated that the Republican Party supported the passage of legislation requiring school districts in direct violation of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education—ten years after the ruling—to adopt plans to begin compliance with the decision. The amendment also proclaimed the party’s “deep belief that the Federal Government has constitutional responsibility to assure that all Americans are absolutely guaranteed the right to vote, are assured equal access to public accommodations and public facilities, are guaranteed equal educational and employment opportunities and assured equal protection of the law.” Finally, the amendment cautioned against the misuse of states’ rights as means to evade state or national responsibilities or to “turn it into a weapon against human rights.”⁵⁸

None of the moderates who discussed the Scott amendment on civil rights approached the level of candor of Rockefeller’s speech a year before that warned that the party was in danger of abandoning its traditional commitment to African American rights. The floor debate that included participation from Republicans who supported the amendment, such as New Jersey senator, Clifford Case, Massachusetts attorney general Edward W. Brooke, and Representative John V. Lindsay, and those against, including McCulloch, and Representatives Charles E. Goodell and Arch Moore, made no mention of the significance of the party nominating a candidate who voted against the Civil Rights Act. Rather than include men who agreed with Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act to reflect the range of thought in the party, the five men who stood in opposition to the Scott amendment were Republicans who had supported the law. In fact, all the participants were known as supporters of civil rights legislation. As a result, everyone involved, whether they approved of the Scott amendment or not, gave the impression that the Republican Party was united in its support of civil rights legislation. The debate was a narrow exchange between Republicans who approved the civil rights plank as written for the sake of unity and those on the other side who criticized it because they viewed it as too feeble. Moore, who made no mention of Goldwater’s record on civil rights or the undercurrent of civil rights opposition in the party, claimed that the Republican Party remained the only party that worked on behalf of African Americans. Those who supported the original plank accused those who defended the Scott amendment of base political motives, but supporters such as Lindsay and Case tried to disprove these arguments. Lindsay told the convention that if the party was willing to pledge to meet its constitutional responsibilities to Americans by preserving limited government, it should also stress its commitment to protect citizens’ most basic human rights. “This platform finds it possible to be specific in one hundred areas, and yet it abandons our earlier pledges to safeguard the right to vote in all elections.” Case also warned that the party should not break with its past, but instead of confronting Goldwater supporters and their decision to remove the word “enforcement” from the civil rights plank, he spoke of their “unintended” break from Republican tradition.⁵⁹

The discussion of the Scott amendment on civil rights resulted in moderate Republicans philosophizing about the party’s ties to Lincoln’s advocacy for African American rights rather than a frank discussion about the party’s rejection of that legacy at the height of the civil rights movement. Goodell began his speech opposing the Scott civil rights amendment by identifying himself as a strong advocate of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although he said he respected the efforts of those who supported the amendment, he opposed the amendment because the current plank contained “a complete commitment … to the cause of human rights.” Goodell warned his fellow Republicans to resist the urge to be carried away by their “common zeal” for civil rights and warned them not to be “extremists on this crucial issue tonight.” Amid numerous moderate Republicans’ statements invoking the party’s foundation in Lincolnian and Reconstruction-era politics, Goodell made a historical argument that stood apart for its appeal to Republicans’ romanticized vision of themselves. He warned, “Let us not be the party of the reconstruction era that watered and nourished the seeds of bitterness and prejudice in this country.” Goodell went on to say the party should adhere to “common sense” and understanding in the spirit of Lincoln. He reminded the audience of the story of Lincoln, who was mindful “of the deep and difficult human problems involved in civil rights,” and instructed those in the White House to “sing Dixie” when he received word that the Civil War was over. Even though the congressman’s Dixie anecdote was a misrepresentation of the president’s words—he did not request the song to be played in honor of Confederates—his emphasis on unity and conciliation above principle was clear. Goodell suggested that moderate Republicans’ calls for an expanded civil rights plank would increase prejudice in the nation and, by inference, within the Republican ranks. Goodell concluded with a message to “the friends of Bill Scranton.” He warned, amid applause and cheers, “I believe sincerely in my heart you have chosen the wrong issue, the wrong place, and the wrong time. I ask that we vote this amendment down and then we bind up our wounds and not only stand but run on this good, great 1964 Republican Platform.”⁶⁰ The refusal of many moderates to challenge Goldwater or the party on the civil rights issue marked the end of an era.

Ultimately, the debate suggested that moderates, who had grown so accustomed to touting the party’s Lincolnian heritage, had overestimated the party’s customary commitment to civil rights. Once both sides finished their arguments, the chairman of each state delegation announced the number of delegates who were voting for or against the Scott amendment on civil rights in a parliamentary inquiry or roll call. Scott and the delegation from Pennsylvania had demanded the vote be recorded in this manner, and consequently, the roll call began with the delegation from Alabama, whose twenty total delegates voted against the Scott amendment. Similarly, all eighty-six delegates from California rejected the amendment. Despite overwhelming delegate support, though never unanimous, from states such as Connecticut, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, the Scott amendment on civil rights failed by a vote of 897 to 409. Senator Scott’s home delegation of Pennsylvania supported the amendment 62 to 2. The lack of unanimous support for the Scott amendment in any state revealed that the effort to enthusiastically support civil rights in the way it prescribed was not embraced by Republicans, regardless of region, at the level of those who opposed it in southern and western states. When the Scranton forces devised their plan to present a civil rights amendment, Lodge remarked, “I can assure that a Republican National Convention could never vote against a strong civil rights plank on a roll-call vote, particularly not on television.”⁶¹ Lodge had misjudged his party.

The End of the Moderate Majority in Republican Presidential Politics

The 1964 convention was historic because it ushered in the rise of Goldwater and the conservatives who drafted him, but the Sun Belt senator’s ascent also marked the displacement of moderates like Rockefeller who had dominated Republican presidential politics since the 1930s. In addition to revealing the divide among moderates, the convention floor debate demonstrated how far Rockefeller had fallen as a leader who could persuade the party to adopt his policies or moderate leadership. The first Scott amendment, which Rockefeller advocated for on the convention floor, called for the incorporation of additional language to the introduction of the platform rejecting extremism. The amendment, which echoed Rockefeller’s statement from the previous summer, had less chance of passing than the civil rights amendment. It stated, “We repudiate the efforts of irresponsible extremist groups, such as the Communists, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, and others to discredit our Party by their efforts to infiltrate positions of responsibility in the Party or to attach themselves to its candidates.”⁶² Even though it did not generate as much debate as the civil rights amendment, the extremism amendment, or more specifically, Rockefeller’s speech in support of it, sparked a firestorm that underscored the rejection of Rockefeller and left an indelible impression on the nation. Rockefeller, who was allotted five minutes to speak, approached the podium with a wide smile on his face. As he waved at the crowd and mouthed hellos, the initial cheers quickly mixed with boos in the auditorium and were peppered with chants of “We want Barry” as Morton asked for order. The sound of the chanting and air horns seemed to please Rockefeller as he continued to smile and mouth greetings rather than attempt to be heard over the cacophony. One newscaster took advantage of the standoff to remind viewers that “Governor Nelson Rockefeller who two years ago, in all the polls, was the leading contender for the Republican nomination this year [had fallen] by the wayside.” Goldwater supporters needed no reminders; this was their opportunity to voice their long-felt frustration over the Eastern Establishment’s influence over the party. Once Rockefeller began speaking, saying he was there in support of adding language to the party platform, he was interrupted by an irate audience member yelling, “No.” That was all the invitation needed for the booing to recommence.⁶³

Rockefeller’s speech not only revealed the rightward-turning party’s denunciation of the governor; it emphasized that Republican leaders’ refusal to address the party’s transformation on race issues had encouraged virulent racism and extremism to take root in the GOP. The five-minute speech, which ended up exceeding ten minutes, focused on the themes presented in The Extremists documentary that Rockefeller had kept from airing in June. Rockefeller was interrupted by prolonged booing from Goldwater supporters whose resentment of Rockefeller had grown exponentially over the past year. Regardless, Rockefeller—at what might be called his last stand of 1964—did not flinch. On the contrary, he faced the opposition with a smile. More than once, Rockefeller asked Morton to control the audience to no avail. For those who tried to drown him out, Rockefeller reminded them, “It is still a free country, ladies and gentlemen. These things, ladies and gentlemen, have no place in America.” The speech he gave between the booing and heckling associated Goldwater support with a “doctrinaire militant minority” that was “wholly alien to … sound and honest Republicanism.” This minority, which he noted, he had spoken out against a year to the day before, on July 14, 1963, was attempting to “convert [the Republican Party] into a cloak of apparent respectability for a dangerous extremism.”⁶⁴ He referred to the tactics of right-wing conservatives who subjected him and his supporters to “anonymous midnight and early-morning telephone calls, unsigned and threatening letters, smear and hate literature, [and] strong-arm and goon tactics.”⁶⁵ Scott, who organized the platform debate, told a staff assistant while on the way to the Cow Palace convention hall, “I have the feeling that Nelson is not too popular with that crowd.” He did not expect, however, the reception Rockefeller received. He recalled, “I was still shocked when I discovered—along with millions of people in the television and radio audience—the extent of the bitterness against Governor Rockefeller in that convention hall.”⁶⁶ The audience response seemed to confirm Rockefeller’s accusations. Jackie Robinson, who was in the auditorium, recalled that he was almost attacked by a delegate from Alabama after he shouted, “That’s right, Rocky. Hit ’em where they live.”⁶⁷ The Rockefeller disdain was palpable among the delegates on the convention floor and the audience in the galleries; a reporter noted that male and female alternate delegates from Ohio, Illinois, and Washington State sitting near him “grew red in the face as they strained to boo and shout catcalls.” Even a Goldwater floor runner, armed with his walkie-talkie intended to help Goldwater’s control center keep the senator’s supporters in check, joined the cacophony to yell, “You goddamned socialist!”⁶⁸ Upon Rockefeller’s conclusion, the debate continued with speakers for and against the amendment, which the delegates quickly rejected. Ultimately, all three Scott amendments were rejected. The two amendments introduced by Michigan delegate Richard C. Van Dusen on behalf of Romney were also rejected with little fanfare. Romney’s amendments on extremism and civil rights were far less controversial than the Scott amendments, and some Goldwater advisers thought they should direct the delegates to approve the extremism plank, which White believed was easily acceptable, but Goldwater refused to offer any conciliation to moderates because he believed it would be interpreted as weakness.⁶⁹ After the demise of Scott and Scranton’s final challenge to the Goldwater bandwagon, one Texas leader told a Newsweek reporter, “The South took the Mason-Dixon line and shoved it right up to Canada.”⁷⁰

Goldwater allies downplayed the significance of Rockefeller’s appearance—both his warning and the negative response—but White conceded that there was an extremist element of Goldwater’s bandwagon, even if the campaign did not overtly welcome it. Goldwater’s campaign manager worked to keep the John Birch Society, for example, at arm’s length publicly, but he also avoided alienating them entirely because those people—whom he referred to as “nuts”—played an important role in making Goldwater a viable candidate for the nomination. White admitted, however, that the John Birch Society’s support for Goldwater caused problems for the campaign. According to White, against the objections of Goldwater supporters like Phyllis Schlafly, he banned John Birch Society literature from campaign headquarters. He also conceded that “there were a lot of attacks on Nelson Rockefeller, I think by the John Birch Society, and others, that had nothing to do with the Goldwater campaign, and, wherever I could find them, I stomped them out.” Although White worked to curtail the relationship between the John Birch Society and the campaign, he did not want to alienate its members entirely. In an interview conducted in the 1980s, White said with a laugh, “Now, I couldn’t stop them from being for Barry Goldwater. And, obviously, I wanted them to vote for him.” White credited the booing to the audience in the gallery, but he admitted that delegates could have been involved. When asked if the heckling may have come from California delegates, White replied, “I had a lot of nuts for Barry Goldwater, in California. That’s why I knew I was going to win the primary. My nuts were going to go to the polls, no matter what happened, as many times as they’d let them go.” “It’s probably true,” continued White, “that three or four of those nuts got themselves elected delegates. And they could very well have jumped up on a chair and hissed and screamed before my floor leaders could pull them off the chair.” The “nuts,” as White referred to them, did not deserve all the blame because, in his opinion, Rockefeller encouraged the booing by “play[ing] the martyr.” White’s flippant account of the heckling confirms that Birchers were an important, albeit minority, element of Goldwater supporters. It also demonstrates how a longtime Republican strategist, who got his start in Republican politics as a New York Young Republican who supported Thomas Dewey in the 1940s, accepted what he considered a problematic element within the Republican Party. The Republican Party was not overrun by the John Birch Society, but White’s acceptance of them in the draft Goldwater effort vindicated Rockefeller’s claim that members of the GOP were trading principle for electoral advantage.⁷¹

Once the convention approved the platform, Scranton sought to bolster moderates while releasing his delegates to Goldwater. His speech confirmed the dilemma of moderates who believed a liberal civil rights stance was an essential Republican principle in a party that increasingly disagreed. Scranton told his supporters that the Republican Party was their “historic house” and that they must remain to strengthen it from the inside. He said this was the way to “stand for equality and justice for all men” and to “stand for positive conservativism that meets modern America’s problems head-on.” Republicans like Rockefeller who advocated for federal civil rights legislation would find this charge difficult to fulfill. “We shall speak out in defense of the freedom of the American people,” continued Scranton, “and we shall work to protect that freedom from the stifling centralism that abounds in Washington today.” Scranton, like Rockefeller, articulated a place for moderates within the Republican Party by seeking a middle ground between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, but many conservatives considered federal civil rights legislation to be the “stifling centralism” they opposed. Scranton said that although he and his supporters thought the platform could be improved, he deemed it “acceptable.”⁷² By announcing it was time to defeat Democrats, Scranton promised his fealty to the party and helped normalize the nomination of the Republican Party’s most ardent opponent of federal civil rights legislation who helped usher into the party’s ranks equally ardent segregationists. Scranton had little choice if he hoped to remain a Republican leader, but this obligatory action allied moderates to a standard-bearer who opposed their vision for the Republican Party and made it increasingly difficult for moderates to assert themselves and their principles in the party. Once Scranton moved to make the nomination unanimous, Goldwater received the Republican presidential nomination on the first ballot with 1,220 of the possible 1,308 delegate votes.⁷³ With the unanimous vote to nominate Republican National Committee chairman William E. Miller, a conservative Catholic Republican from New York, the vice presidential nominee, it was time for Goldwater to give his acceptance speech. With television cameras filming him, George Fleming, an African American alternate delegate from New Jersey, walked out in tears after the ballot and remained absent for a half hour.⁷⁴

As the nominee, Goldwater gave an acceptance speech free from any concessions to moderates or efforts to avoid his more controversial positions. Goldwater’s speech, like his candidacy, defied conventional wisdom and was directed to his supporters alone, who considered his victory the manifestation of their defiance of the Eastern Establishment and party regulars. Goldwater told the enraptured audience that Americans had “followed false prophets” that had led the nation away from freedom, saying that “the good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave, and to flourish as the land of the free.” The presidential nominee’s speech, which party professionals expected would be an attempt to reunite the party, was instead a call to arms for his most loyal supporters. The line that made it clear that Goldwater was done conceding to party moderates and caused the greatest uproar in the convention center would define his entire campaign: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”⁷⁵ Those outside of Goldwater’s most devoted supporters were shocked. Halfway through his speech, one reporter exclaimed in disbelief, “My God, he’s going to run as Barry Goldwater.”⁷⁶ Upon first hearing the statement, Goldwater’s speech writer Karl Hess remarked, “It was as if I stepped on a land mine. But everyone on staff, including Goldwater, loved it.”⁷⁷ At the utterance of his most famous line, delegates who had been ordered at numerous points during the convention to remain orderly roared in approval. Some even shook the struts of the ABC broadcast booth that hovered high above the convention floor subjecting anchorman Howard K. Smith, who was unfortunate enough to be perched above the crowd, to five minutes of shaking, creaking floorboards, and objects sliding off his desk.⁷⁸

Goldwater’s speech never mentioned civil rights or the party’s participation in the passage of the Civil Rights Act; instead, he offered an inherent critique of those who sought to protect civil rights through legislation. The closest reference to the nation’s struggle over civil rights came in a statement about private property and constitutionality that would have reminded the audience of his objections to the constitutionality of the new law. Goldwater told his audience, “We see, in the sanctity of private property, the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society.” The audience replied with prolonged applause. He warned the audience that “equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”⁷⁹ This convention and its nominee were the antithesis of 1960 when Nixon hoped to bring the party’s left and right together while embracing the policies and leadership of Eisenhower.

Goldwater took special care to speak out against lawlessness in US cities, when much of the nation was concerned about the violence that threatened civil rights activists and average Black southerners. He told the audience, “The growing menace in our country tonight, to personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches, on the playgrounds, and places of business, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern, or should be, of every thoughtful citizen in the United States.”⁸⁰ Rising crime and violence in cities had not been at the forefront of the nation’s attention that summer—although that would change in a couple of weeks with the outbreak of the first major urban uprising of the decade in Harlem, New York. Instead, when Goldwater made his pronouncement, the violence that dominated headlines had occurred in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi. The bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner would not be found until August 4, but news of their disappearance appeared on the front page of the New York Times on June 23, 1964. In response to Goldwater’s speech, the New York Amsterdam News responded, “Is Senator Goldwater aware of how much time is lost by the police forces of Mississippi and Alabama as they spend their time dragging citizens from polling places, beating them with clubs, prodding them with cattle prods and brutalizing them with police dogs—time which could well be spent … tracking down criminals and bringing them to justice?”⁸¹ Goldwater did not use racialized language when he discussed the threat of “bullies and marauders” in US cities, but that would change during his general campaign as he continued to conflate random acts of crime in cities, urban uprisings, political demonstrations, and juvenile delinquency as law and order issues to be used against liberals who he said were too permissive.⁸² Goldwater spoke of freedom, the sanctity of private property, and the danger of tyranny abroad but said nothing of the crimes permitted by southern law enforcement and local governments in the name of maintaining social order.

Goldwater’s speech drew attention because of what many perceived as a negative tone and a disinterest in appealing to the party regulars and moderates who had expressed concern about his nomination. Senator Keating, for example, fled the convention hall while Goldwater was at the podium to later insist that he left early to avoid traffic. Minnesota congressman Walter H. Judd, whose name had been placed in nomination, remarked, “Barry, who is always warm and charming in person, seemed more defiant than conciliatory, militant than magnanimous. It is hard to see how he can win on that basis.”⁸³ Rockefeller released a statement in opposition to Goldwater’s speech: “To extol extremism—whether ‘in defense of liberty’ or in ‘pursuit of justice’—is dangerous, irresponsible and frightening. Any sanction of lawlessness, of the vigilantes, and of the unruly mob can only be deplored.” Furthermore and to reiterate his own convention speech, he continued, “The extremism of the Communists, of the Ku Klux Klan and of the John Birch Society—like that of most terrorists—has always been claimed by such groups to be in defense of liberty.”⁸⁴ Rockefeller did not explicitly refuse to endorse Goldwater, but his disapproval was clearly conveyed. Adriana Merritt Hope, a Republican from Carmel, California, wrote Rockefeller to express her dismay that “the entire convention suggested a frightening and, I hope, unintentional satire of a nazi beer klatch … the same militant air. Even the noteworthy and historic event of the nomination of Senator [Hiram L.] Fong, which should have been greeted with an ovation, was trampled over in the melee of hooves and horns.”⁸⁵ Rather than seek to unite the party’s minority factions of the left and right, Goldwater appealed to the conservatives who sought ideological purity. With the aid or consent of most party regulars, moderates, and longtime adherents of midwestern conservatism, Goldwater dissociated the party from the advancement of the civil rights movement only days after its greatest legislative victory to date.

Goldwater ended up being a divisive candidate who alienated a significant portion of voters and specifically drove a wedge between Black voters and the GOP. Theodore White remarked on the unusual tone of Goldwater’s campaign: “However often one listened to him at any time in 1964,” he wrote, “there was always this tension—an exhalation of sincerity which could rise almost instantaneously to fury. One puzzled over the peculiar quality of outrage one could find in almost any Goldwater utterance.”⁸⁶ As a nonpartisan organization, the NAACP broke with precedent and repudiated the Goldwater campaign. Two days before the election, Wilkins told an audience in Saint Louis, Missouri that Goldwater sought to turn African Americans into “bogey-men to frighten their fellow white citizens.” “The real depths of the campaign conducted by the minority party’s Goldwaterites,” stated Wilkins, “are revealed in the low-level racism spread across the nation in a frank effort to divide white and black, to sow fear among white people and to capitalize on hate.”⁸⁷ A private survey of New York Republicans commissioned by Rockefeller found that those who planned to vote for Goldwater most often said they would do so because of his views on civil rights and his “outspoken brand of ‘conservatism.’ ” The survey also found that 46 percent of New York Republicans planned to vote for Johnson, not because they were “pro-Johnson” but because they did not want Goldwater in the White House.⁸⁸ Rockefeller offered dutiful support to the Republican ticket, including making campaign appearances on behalf of Goldwater. In September, Rockefeller had also praised the candidate when he met with Goldwater during a New York campaign stop. During that trip, Goldwater told Republicans to end the “childish horseplay of division.” The next month, after Rockefeller praised Goldwater for his “courage and integrity” and encouraged Republicans to support Republican candidates during a Goldwater campaign stop in New York,” Robinson expressed his disapproval in a private letter to Rockefeller: “I see that Barry Goldwater is now, in your opinion, a man of courage and integrity. You know and I know that a Goldwater victory would result in violence and bloodshed. His candidacy reeks with prejudice and bigotry. His remark that this has become a nation ruled by minorities while the majority suffers is not only stupid, but undeserving of support from a man with real courage and integrity.”⁸⁹ Despite the limited scope of his popularity in 1964—and his odiousness to most African Americans—the majority of Republican leaders from across the political spectrum accepted Goldwater’s nomination, regardless of the traditions they had to abandon in the process, in hopes of finding a new equation for besting the Democratic Party in future elections. While covering the convention, Julius Duscha reported that Republican moderates were generally resigned to accept defeat; he quoted one moderate governor as saying, “Let the Goldwater people have the whole thing. We’ve had ours. Let them have theirs this time and we’ll see what they can do.”⁹⁰ It was unclear if moderate Republicanism would one day return to prominence in the Republican Party, but for now, their day had come and gone.

Goldwater lost the popular vote by almost 16 million ballots, a margin greater than any other presidential candidate in the United States. He carried only six states, but five of them were particularly important to the future of the Republican Party. In addition to winning his home state of Arizona, Goldwater won Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. He also ran well in Florida, further validating the success of Operation Dixie during the 1962 midterm elections.⁹¹ His victory in the South also gave weight to Johnson’s prediction that the Republican Party would benefit from the Democratic Party’s support of civil rights.⁹² Goldwater energized the conservative base and demonstrated the power that could be marshaled by the right wing of the Republican Party. His rise in the party persuaded southern Democrats such as Strom Thurmond, for example, to become a Republican because he believed that liberals had hijacked the Democratic Party and were “engaged in another Reconstruction.” The president of the white supremacist organization Citizens Councils of America later concluded that Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act inspired segregationists to “build a protest around him.”⁹³ Scranton and a few other prominent moderates did attempt to prevent the Goldwater nomination, but most chose to fall in line. The civil rights debate at the convention emphasized that many mainstream Republicans refused to anger the ideological conservatives and racists within the base by demanding the party affirm its support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Instead, they left the Democratic Party to reap the political benefit and burden of civil rights, allowing, even encouraging, the Republican Party to become a haven for voters who opposed the aims of the civil rights movement. In the name of party unity, moderates normalized the rightward turn initiated by Goldwater’s most avid supporters. During the general campaign, even Rockefeller encouraged Republicans to support Goldwater, although many Republicans would claim he never supported Goldwater.

Shortly after the 1964 election, moderates tried to capitalize on Goldwater’s staggering defeat without losing the gains he made in the South. The first step was to replace Goldwater’s personal choice of Republican national chairman, Dean Burch, with a party regular and stalwart, Ray Bliss of Ohio. With the aid of Bliss, moderates tried to move the party back to the center and ease tensions between moderates and conservatives in part by remaining silent about the increased racial conservatism in the party. Goldwater’s nomination did not bring about the demise of moderate Republicanism, but moderate Republican politicians’ decision to follow Bliss’s lead and remain silent about the party’s rightward shift on race, as many did at the convention, meant they would continue to lose their position as leaders who could dictate the tenor of the party on racial issues. Although there were continued efforts to maintain a Republican presence in the industrial North, there was a countervailing effort to protect southern gains. This remained true even when it required marshaling contradictory interests within the party.

In 1965, the Republican National Committee sponsored four regional meetings to demonstrate that the GOP had become a national party again, but cracks appeared quickly in what was supposed to be a show of strength. The events in Des Moines, Atlanta, Albuquerque, and Philadelphia were intended to revive the party in preparation for the 1966 elections and increase its outreach and appeal to a variety of groups including young voters, women’s organizations, senior citizens, ethnics, and professionals.⁹⁴ Bliss attended each of these meetings and learned firsthand how difficult it could be to lead a party whose political ideology ranged by the region. At a press conference for Atlanta’s southern regional meeting, Bliss read a prepared statement where he lauded the Republican Party’s major gains that had reestablished a thriving two-party system in the South. Bliss, who wanted to focus on organizational and electoral gains—without mentioning the ideological shifts that made it possible—was forced by persistent members of the press to address the party’s reorientation and possible ties to the John Birch Society. The Los Angeles Times reported that Bliss became “flustered and embarrassed” while he tried to evade reporters’ questions about “the party’s attraction for segregationists and its near-exclusion of Negroes from party affairs in some states.” Bliss tried to discount questions about the party’s inconsistency by comparing Republicans and Democrats, whom he noted included figures as disparate as Adam Clayton Powell (Democratic US representative from New York City) and Russell Long (Democratic US senator from Louisiana). He refused, however, to say if this meant the party would accommodate the segregationist practices of the Mississippi state party, for example, that was still distributing copies of its 1964 platform stating that segregation was essential to “harmonious racial relations and continued progress of both races in the state of Mississippi.” In response to questions from a Black reporter from Atlanta, Bliss said that he thought the party should try to stanch the exodus of African Americans from the party’s southern wing, but he admitted that he knew of no actual efforts to retain these longtime Republicans. When Bliss’s attempts to avoid this line of questioning continued to fail, he said he was only a “technician” and it was not his responsibility to discuss “issues.”⁹⁵ Bliss was determined to exploit the party’s increasing popularity in the South, which he said was best for the party and the nation.

Bliss’s decision to focus on the party’s electoral strength, regardless of ideology, aided conservative ideologues’ efforts to become more influential in the party. It created an opportunity for southern Republicans to assert their influence more quickly because they were far less accommodating. Goldwater and his supporters often disparaged moderate Republicans for their “me-tooism” that led the party to accept the excesses of New Deal liberalism, but now moderates’ compliance would make the ascendance of conservatives in the party far quicker. Goldwater’s nomination was a break from the party’s recent history of nominating party moderates, but his nomination fit with an older tradition of the party equivocating on African American rights. The largely unchallenged nomination of a man who broke with the party on civil rights reflected the party’s intrinsic struggle to balance its moral and practical obligations to African Americans with the party’s pursuit of electoral success. This was particularly true in the civil rights era when African Americans increasingly demanded more than the symbolic support or patronage the Republican Party was accustomed to offering in lieu of legislative results and tangible gains.

Rockefeller was the best-known moderate Republican who had critiqued the Republican Party’s new southern orientation, but it had been a politically dangerous and isolating enterprise. Another leader who refused to remain silent was Grant Reynolds, a Black Republican and civil rights activist, who was forced to resign as counsel to the chairman of the Republican National Committee after he opposed the nomination of Goldwater. Despite his frustration, Reynolds was not ready to abandon the party he had been loyal to all his life. Instead, he helped found the National Negro Republican Assembly (NNRA) on August 23, 1964.⁹⁶ First as the organization’s national director of political activities and later as its president, Reynolds strove to maintain the Republican Party that had been a safe haven for African Americans. The formation of the NNRA was in opposition to pragmatic moderate Republicans’ efforts to consolidate the party’s power by accepting segregationists. In a speech to the Oberlin College Young Republican Club on February 12, 1965, Reynolds told his audience gathered for a Lincoln Day observance that the party was at a crossroads.

This is a time when Republican orators, many of them pregnant with self-righteousness and self-delusion, celebrate the birth of Lincoln by blaming all the ills that beset the nation on the Democrats. Very few will seize upon this as an opportunity to acknowledge our party’s mistakes and design a consensus of broad appeal to American voters. Their motto is: “Stop fighting Republicans and start fighting Democrats.”

Let me warn my party at the outset, unless we can vanquish more so-called Republicans than we have, we soon won’t have anything left with which to fight Democrats. Any party which has lost its moral moorings can do little more than invite a destructive pounding by the political storms which lie ahead.⁹⁷

Despite poor treatment from fellow Republicans and his growing disappointment with former allies who chose to remain silent, Reynolds and his associates such as George G. Fleming of New Jersey, George W. Lee, and Jackie Robinson warned that the party could not survive if it abandoned its moral grounding. Reynolds was incorrect, however. Rather than go into decline, the party became successively more popular as it shed its identity as the Party of Lincoln.