Wednesday, August 3, 2016

EXTRA: In your guts, you know he’s nuts -- will we soon hear of Trump?

How long until we start getting parody campaign buttons along these lines?

For Democrat political operatives with a sense of history already are using the Internet to disseminate an old television spot from the 1964 presidential campaign; one in which an actor portrays a would-be Republican voter who can’t handle the notion of accepting the GOP nominee – Barry Goldwater – for that election cycle.

I DO FIND it intriguing that political observers of a Republican orientation often like to claim that the 1964 election was the one in which Democrats did themselves serious harm by creating the impression that the Republican Party was the one that would appeal to people of a conservative ideological bent.

Which led to the Southern Strategy of Richard M. Nixon in the ’68 election cycle and a series of future campaign strategies that one could claim have culminated with the conservative takeover of the political process that allowed Donald Trump to gain the Republican nomination this year.

We could be going through a bit of Goldwater nostalgia to remind us of the long-time senator from Arizona who made his bid for national prominence some 52 years ago.

How long until Trump-ites retaliate by reminding us that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was, herself, one of the famed “Goldwater Girls” who came from a family of Republicans from suburban Park Ridge – or at least  until their daughter went off and experienced the Sixties while in college.


IN SHORT, WE could be getting more than our share of Barry Goldwater nostalgia in coming weeks as we remember the candidacy who, for good or bad, motivated the conservative ideologues of our nation into action.


Although the day we see a parody spot of “Daisy” against Trump, that’s probably when the nostalgia kick will have gone too far.

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