A Republican worried about an Arizona senator who "sounds a little irresponsible during a campaign," who talks about "total victory" and got nominated despite the fact that many of his party's base have long opposed him? "If you unite behind a man you don't believe in it's a lie," this Republican says about Barry Goldwater in a 1964 ad for Lyndon Johnson. The specifics he cites may have changed, but given some of the conservative columnists who've come out against McCain in recent days, this ad eerily sounds just as true in some places about John McCain.
Postscript: A friend sent me this post which also embeds the ad in this post. Part of his analysis sums up the modern Republican party nicely:
The poor man, such an icon of highly-educated, upper-income traditional Republicanism, so dismayed about the ideological radicals that seem to have taken over his party. He elaborately lights a cigarette. “I tell you, those people who got control of that convention..” - he looks at us, unnerved - “who are they?”
Well, forty years later we can answer his question: they are the men who will take over your party. Who will drive your likes out as RINOs, and will remake the Republican Party in their own image. First Nixon will come back, and embrace the Southern bigots who abandoned the Democrats. Then Reagan will wither against the Evil Empire and usher in an era of big-lending voodoo economics. Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan will become credible primary candidates. Finally, your party will swear allegiance to the faux-ranching, warmongering, born-again conservative populist George Bush Junior, as it feeds on a diet of televised shoutfests and talk radio shows which ridicule everyone who sounds remotely like you. And when Bush fails, the know-nothings that will by then dominate the grassroots of your party will place their last hopes on a know-nothing novice Governor from Alaska, while ranting about the Democratic candidate as a “traitor” or a “terrorist”, shouting “treason!” and “kill him!”
That’s who they are.
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