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video and liked it, and Goldwater’s campaign staff reluctantly acquiesced to airing the ad, if for no other reason than to maintain control.
    The title “A Time for Choosing” derives from a paragraph in the speech in which Reagan set before his audience a choice between self-reliance and the welfare state: “So we have come to a time for choosing. Either we accept the responsibility for our own destiny, or we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
    Reagan also went straight at Goldwater’s name-calling detractors in both Democrat and establishment Republican circles by saying, “Those who deplore use of the terms
‘pink’
and
‘Leftist’
are themselves guilty of branding all who oppose their liberalism as right-wing extremists.”
    But Reagan took the argument a step beyond party politics by asking, “How long can we afford the luxury of this family fight when we are at war with the most dangerous enemy ever known to man?”
    Suddenly Reagan wasn’t just talking to Republicans or conservatives, he was talking to all Americans—and he was selling conservative ideas about the dangers of Communism and the loss of freedom that was sure to follow the growth of the welfare state.
    In some sense, for the next twenty-five years Reagan never deviated from that script.
    “The Speech,” as it came to be known, set forth a conservative manifesto that was certainly grounded in Goldwater’s analysis of the shortcomings and dangers of the welfare state and appeasement of the Soviet Union, but was somehow deeper and more appealing than mere criticism of Great Society liberalism and the establishment elite’s “softness” on Communism.
    The broadcast of “A Time for Choosing,” up against
Pettycoat Junction
and
Peyton Place
, raised some $6 million for Goldwater; the ad ran multiple times, but it sparked little interest or comment inthe media at the time. Even in the
Los Angeles Times,
which leaned Republican in those days, Reagan’s speech only made Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood gossip column. 17
    A week out from what was to be an electoral defeat of epic proportions, what the media thought of that last-ditch ploy by the Goldwater campaign wasn’t really important. What was important was that in its content and in Reagan’s smooth and reassuring delivery, “the Speech” landed like a bombshell in the midst of the conservative movement.

2
RICHARD NIXON AND THE RISE OF RONALD REAGAN
    T he frustration many conservatives felt after the Republican defeats of 2006, 2008, and 2012 were nothing compared to how we felt after Goldwater’s 1964 defeat.
    For me it was six months before I could go directly to the front section of the newspaper. The news was so bad I had to sort of sneak up on it, starting with the comics, then the sports section, the local news, and finally the front page and editorials.
    The
New York Times
opined that the only way Republicans could win was through the establishment Republican me-tooism that Goldwater had campaigned against in the primaries and conservatives abhorred. Sound familiar?
    Unlike the Republican National Committee’s whitewash of the Romney campaign’s failures, the “I told you so” postelection autopsy of Goldwater’s defeat was brutal.
    The Republican establishment was on the warpath, and anyone who had been an outspoken conservative or Goldwater supporter was in danger of being scalped.
    Republican governor George Romney—father of 2012 establishment Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney—after refusing to endorse Goldwater’s campaign and helping to lead apreconvention “Stop Goldwater” movement, wrote him a scathing twelve-page letter criticizing his “extremism” in the wake of his loss.
    Republicans had no ability to stop or even slow down the Democratic agenda. When President Johnson took the oath of office on January 20, 1965,