Reply #45: Goldwater didn't have to lose for Reagan to win. [View All]

[AP]

It's not like Goldwater made a sacrifice which drew his party to the right.

It's more likely that either of these scenarios are more accurate:

(1) Goldwater was ahead of an inevitable demographic and money shift -- had a Rockefeller-Republican won that race, it wasn't going to change the fact that America was going to elect Reagan pretty soon after that; or

(2) Goldwater could have won had he been smarter and better organized.

I don't know where people get this idea that you have to ever lose to win. Losers don't make policy. And winners, as Bush has shown, can do things to America that make it harder for demographic shifts to make them irrelevant.