At the 1964 Republican National Convention at Cow Palace in Daly City, adjacent San Francisco, CA, then-NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller was granted five minutes to address the delegates. He was booed for over 16 minutes.
At the time, the Republican party’s sweetheart was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, and the party was in jeopardy of being hijacked by subversive ideologues from the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society, Communists and others whom Goldwater and the party at large refused to repudiate. Appealing to racist elements, and Southern Democrats, Goldwater later became the party’s presidential nominee, only to be resoundingly defeated in the November General Election by incumbent LBJ – Lyndon Baines Johnson – whom had become president upon JFK’s death. Goldwater’s defeat was one of the widest margins in American political history.
In his later years, having resigned, then re-elected and succeeded by John McCain, Goldwater’s extremist libertarian ideals included abortion, gay rights, and anti-religious sentiment.
I wonder – to what extent have those same subversives successfully infiltrated the party, our airwaves and national governance today?
The following is the text of Governor Rockefeller’s remarks from The Rockefeller Archive Center, and are available online. See http://www.rockarch.org/inownwords/nar1964text.php.
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FOR RELEASE AT 6:00 P.M., PDT, TUESDAY, JULY 14, 1964 ROBERT L. McMANUS, PRESS SECRETARY TO THE GOVERNOR
TEXT OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER PREPARED FOR DELIVERY BEFORE THE THIRD SESSION OF THE 1964 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION IN MOVING ADOPTION OF THE AMENDMENT TO THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF EXTREMISM, COW PALACE, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA JULY 14, 1964
Mr. Chairman, fellow delegates, I move that the following language be inserted in the proposed 1964 Republican Platform …Continue…