Bittersweet Memories of an Election 50 Years Ago, and Goldwater’s Great Victory

Since Lyndon Johnson got 61.1% of the popular vote in the 1964 election, compared to Barry Goldwater’s 38.5%, and the electoral count was 486 to 52 in favor of LBJ, you may wonder how I can describe that as “Goldwater’s great victory.”

Simple: I’m using Conservative Movement logic.

According to Conservative Movement logic, by wresting the GOP nomination from Nelson Rockefeller, conservatives gained control of the Republican Party (allegedly, and at least temporarily), and that established the Conservative Movement as a substantial factor in national politics. And without the Conservative Movement, the United States would have become socialist, if not communist, long ago. That’s why the Goldwater candidacy, while an electoral and popular vote defeat, was really a victory over the long run. It created the Conservative Movement.

Well, 50 years gives us an opportunity to judge just how successful the Conservative Movement has been in the long run. Let’s take a look at how Uncle Sam has been starved by the existence of the Conservative Movement.

First, let’s note that the population of the U.S. grew 70% between 1964 and 2014, from 188.6 million to 320 million. That is not even a doubling of population, so people growth cannot be blamed for the figures below.

And yes, GDP has grown 25 times larger in that time period, from $685.8 billion to $17,416 billion. But as we will see, that cannot explain the even bigger growth of government spending. (And remember, the primary domestic goal of the Conservative Movement was to reduce the size of the government.)

	1964   (in billions)	2014    (in billions)	Growth
Total federal spending	$118.5	$3504.2	28.2 times larger
Federal deficit	$5.9	$483.4	218 times larger
Gross public debt	$316.1	$17824.1	41.8 times larger
.

The growth of the federal government is consistently overwhelming, no matter where you look—pensions, health care, education, “defense,” welfare, protection, transportation, or interest. And with that increase in the size of spending has come an even more ominous rise in government control of our lives. Can anyone give an example where we are more free today than we were in 1964? I cannot.

Yes, conservatives. ‘Twas a famous victory.

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