Rather than laying the foundation for a Democratic-dominated national politics, however, the Johnson-Goldwater election inspired a generation of right-wing strategists and organizers. After Johnson’s victory in 1964, only one other Democrat (Jimmy Carter) managed to win the presidency until 1992, and the Republican Party — and in many ways US politics as a whole — shifted decisively rightward. This was in large part the result of successful organizing by a movement that came to be known as the New Right, organizing that looked to outside observers like embarrassing infighting inside the Republican Party between the centrist Republicans and so-called Goldwater Republicans. Rather than hurting the GOP, this right-wing civil war was the precursor to the ascendance of the Christian right that would dominate the party for the next several decades.
A similar pattern may be repeating itself in today’s Republican Party, this time not in the wake of a terrible loss but a decisive victory. Having hitched itself to Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s coalition is in turmoil. And as in the case of the Goldwater campaign, the extreme and now marginal wing of the party could expand its influence.
The Groyper Fringe
The people who tried and failed to get Goldwater elected didn’t take their ball and go home. They stayed in politics for years and decades afterward, working hard to get their ideas into the mainstream. Fighting not just against the Democrats but against moderate forces inside the GOP, these young radicals would go on to found and staff dozens of leading right-wing organizations, from the Moral Majority to the Heritage Foundation. Some of their leaders became famous: Phyllis Schlafly, who led the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, or Paul Weyrich, who developed the Heritage Foundation and laid the groundwork for whole new cadres of extreme right-wing leaders. Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 and George W. Bush’s in 2000 were the fruits of their labor, a complete transformation of the Republican Party from a less ideological party of big business to a coalition of evangelicals and “free market” devotees.
We may currently be seeing something similar inside the Trump campaign and among the wider Right. Unsurprisingly, many campaign staffers were significantly more conservative than the infamously nonideological Trump. Story after story has been showing that the offices of many right-wing GOP politicians are now staffed by “Groypers,” a fascist movement following the young leader Nick Fuentes.