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establishment held sway. He lost in New Hampshire to Henry Cabot Lodge, then US ambassador to Vietnam, who won as a write-in candidate, and he lost in Oregon to New York governor Nelson Rockefeller.
    Goldwater won Illinois, Indiana, and Nebraska, but the pounding he was taking from the progressive Republican establishment was having some effect. However, Goldwater roared back and upset Rockefeller, who had been the favorite, in the California Republican primary, and Rockefeller dropped out of the race.
    Pennsylvania’s Governor William Scranton was the last-ditch hope of the “Stop Goldwater” forces, but his campaign, which launched only weeks before the Republican Convention, never really got off the ground. Goldwater won the nomination on the first ballot with 883 delegates to Scranton’s 214.
    One of Goldwater’s key supporters and confidants in the presidential campaign, Bill Middendorf, put it this way: Goldwater “changed American politics” by bringing about “a marked shift in Republican philosophy and geography, from liberal to conservative, and from the Northeast to the South and West.” 9
    Goldwater’s acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco has become a classic of American political thought, but its most memorable line, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue,” would be used against him. 10
    Liberal Republicans claimed to be shocked. The party they had controlled for so long had fallen into the hands of “extremists.”Political commentators were equally taken aback. After hearing the speech, one reporter expressed their collective opprobrium: “My God, he’s going to run as Barry Goldwater.” 11
    Goldwater’s credo played into the hands of establishment Republicans eager to thwart the conservative takeover of the GOP, and Democrats eager to hold on to power in Washington, by allowing them to continue the drumbeat of criticism of him as an “extremist” that began during the Republican primaries.
    After Goldwater won the nomination, the progressive Republican establishment did precious little to help him and much to hurt him—unlike Senator Bob Taft, who actually campaigned for Eisenhower, even after he lost the nomination in what was arguably the dirtiest Republican Convention ever.
    The pattern set in the Eisenhower and Goldwater campaigns still holds true today. When a conservative loses, he is expected to campaign for the establishment Republican winner, as Taft did. When a conservative wins, the losing establishment candidate routinely undermines the conservative, as Rockefeller, Scranton, and Romney did to Goldwater in 1964 and Virginia’s establishment Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling did to conservative Ken Cuccinelli in 2013.
    Rockefeller, Lodge, and Scranton made no real attempt to debate Goldwater on domestic policy or national defense or refute his criticism of establishment Republican me-tooism. Instead, he was attacked on a personal level as an “extremist,” a “kook,” and a “crackpot” who had no hope of winning the general election.
    Progressive establishment Republicans also labeled Goldwater as a racist for opposing, on principled constitutional grounds, much of President Johnson’s civil rights legislation, and labeled him a warmonger for advocating a military build-up to not just counter, but to roll back the Soviets. Goldwater’s blunt and often profane, off-the-cuff comments seemed to confirm such charges when he joked that he would “lob” missiles “into the men’s room at the Kremlin.” 12
    And the Democrats took up the attacks where establishment Republicans left off.
    Conservatives, to the extent they had seized control of Republican organizations, were still political neophytes. Goldwater’s criticisms of the Democrats and progressive Republican me-tooism were appealing and