Goldwater's principled stand on the [Civil Rights Act] cost him millions of votes. He later regretted his stand, but he did it on principle and not because he was a racist...which he wasn't.
Goldwater---who'd voted for every previous piece of civil rights legislation during his early years in the Senate (and on the Phoenix
City Council when he served prior to his first Senate term)---had objected to two portions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on constitutional
grounds. But because Senate rules of the time said otherwise, he could only vote for or against the entire package, not reject those two
portions and agree to the others.
So while Goldwater would have been easily better than Johnson, I don't know if he could have stopped all the bad legislation passed during that time.
He might not have
stopped some of that legislation, but had he been elected president Goldwater might well have vetoed what
he didn't approve of and thrown the gauntlet down to Congress to both explain why they sent him unconstitutional legislation in the
first place and to override his veto. We'll never know for certain, of course, but he had said previously, publicly, and personally, I think
it was in
The Conscience of a Conservative . . .
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to
promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs,
but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted
financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally
permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main
interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.From his speech at the convention that nominated him:
We must assure a society here which, while never abandoning the needy or forsaking the helpless, nurtures incentives and opportunity
for the creative and the productive. We must know the whole good is the product of many single contributions.
I cherish a day when our children once again will restore as heroes the sort of men and women who - unafraid and undaunted - pursue the
truth, strive to cure disease, subdue and make fruitful our natural environment and produce the inventive engines of production, science,
and technology.
This nation, whose creative people have enhanced this entire span of history, should again thrive upon the greatness of all those things
which we, as individual citizens, can and should do. During Republican years, this again will be a nation of men and women, of families
proud of their role, jealous of their responsibilities, unlimited in their aspirations - a nation where all who can will be self-reliant.
We Republicans see in our constitutional form of government the great framework which assures the orderly but dynamic fulfillment of the
whole man, and we see the whole man as the great reason for instituting orderly government in the first place.
We see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally
of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional
government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments.
We do not seek to lead anyone's life for him - we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with
government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed. (Emphasis added.)
I suspect you can glean from remarks such as those quoted that a President Goldwater would, indeed, have vetoed any legislation that
in fact did violence to the Constitution and/or would have extended the government's tentacles into places to where they did not legitimately
belong.
