Ronnie gave this speech on Oct. 27th, 1964. Six days later the Presidential election was held and Johnson defeated Goldwater by receiving 61.1% of the vote.

Goldwater was running on a platform of 'We got Nukes!' and insisted he was the guy that knew how to use them. He also wanted to get rid of Social Security.

"The Speech" was quickily seen at the time as a last ditch effort to save Goldwater's chances of election. Reagan gave it only six days before the election so Johnson's would not have time to respond to it, and a majority of people at the time saw it as nothing but a lot of twisted facts and distortions that would not relly make Goldwater look good but would put doubt in people's minds about Johnson.

Reagan was also paid quite well for giving this speech at a Goldwater rally and this fact did not help his crediblity.

This speech is played today as something of a revelation of just how smart Reagan was, but the speech was written for him by a Republican speechwriter. He just delivered it and first saw it the day he gave it.

The 'facts' in the speech are another major problem. At the time most people recoginized them as just being made up and/or not relevant. I remember one line in it that got a big horse laugh was the part about people paying taxes at a 90% rate or something like that. Yes, that rate existed, but no one in the US paid that rate. No one. Goldwater's problem was that people knew this.

I don't have the time to take this speech apart, but I do remember that it made a lot of people want to vote for Johnson. The image it left in peoples minds was that Goldwater would tell any lie to get elected.

To quote Newt Gingrich, "That stratgy failed."

One thing that also came up at this time was the fact that Goldwater was not a 'Natural Born US Citizen'. Neither he nor his parents were born in the US. I don't remember where his parents were from, but he was born in the Arizona Territory. At the time this was something no one took seriously; it was only discussed as a weird twist of legal language and a few jokes about his age.