Mark my word - if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know. I've tried to deal with them.
Barry Goldwater, 1994

Barry Goldwater (1909 - 1998), five-term Republican United States Senator from Arizona, saw early on that the influence of the "religious right" on the Republican Party could lead to its undoing. An unlikely, and unpopular, point of view from the man known as "Mr. Conservative." But then Barry Goldwater never shied away from voicing his opinion.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president ... except me.

Goldwater lost his 1964 presidential campaign against incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson by a landslide. The Johnson campaign capitalized on Goldwater's extreme anti-Communist views and his admission in a television interview that he would consider launching a nuclear attack on Vietnam.

A lot of so-called conservatives today don't know what the word means. They think I've turned liberal
because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman,
not up to the Pope or some do-gooders or the religious right. It's not a conservative issue at all.

After the campaign and back in the Senate, the early version of Goldwater as a hard-line Republican gave way to the more complex, real-life version. And when he failed to live up to his former image, many Republicans were left confounded, and would eventually shun him.

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.

In 1993 he wrote a now-famous commentary that appeared in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times denouncing the banning of gays in the military. He would later support an Arizona initiative to legalize medical marijuana. The Republican Party never knew quite what to do with him.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person,
I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate
their moral beliefs to me? ... And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks
it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step
of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'