This is a book by Republicans who bemoaned the right wing takeover of the party. It was written in 1965.

A substantial portion of today's Never Trump conservatives were not even born when that book was written. The GOP into which they were socialized as young people was the emerging one bemoaned in that book as having already lost its mind.

The author of this book was 11 or 12 when the book about the GOP having lost its head was published in 1966. https://www.google.com/books/edition/It_Was_All_a_Lie/09C7DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover

There are many observations in that 1966 book that have a familiar, contemporary ring to them. The authors take Goldwater to task for catering to Southern segregationist voters, and takes the party establishment to task for not standing up to the right wing fanatics.

The authors are also dismayed that so many conservatives regarded 1964 as a great moment of triumph, and thus are not looking to make any significant changes in their political approach.

Needless to say, the authors failed to perceive just how powerful and electorally lucrative the politics of white backlash would be for Nixon in '68 and '72, and then Reagan in 1980.

Their snarky dismissal of kooky California Republicans like Ronald Reagan is pretty hilarious...and, in hindsight, really failing to grasp where American politics was headed.

The GOP brand was already "Patriots vs. leftists," and these Republicans were quite disappointed by how sordid and silly such messaging was.

"Even after the party recognizes the expendability of its far right "strength" & cashiers its extremists--something it shows little...willingness to do;...it will still have to face...the exhaustion of its ideology & the estrangement of almost the entire intellectual community."

Two years before I was born, these Republican authors were acknowledging that in its current state, it was hard to get any serious intellectuals to take the party seriously. It's only gotten worse.

They offer quite an extensive analysis of the estrangement of the nation's intellectuals from the GOP. They quickly dismiss the silly idea that this is some devious trick the Democrats have pulled on the nation's college campuses.

Like Trump, Goldwater inspired a bunch of more moderate or conservative intellectuals to draw a line and say "there's no way I could sign off on this absurd candidate."

These Republican authors, striving to steer the party away from the right, are appalled that most Republican operatives seem to start from the assumption that the American people "are narrow-minded, selfish, xenophobic, and racially prejudiced."

These authors rightly perceived that "the conservative movement" was increasingly pandering to the prejudices of voters. They thought this would doom the GOP to electoral irrelevancy. Sadly, they were incorrect.

"Goldwater's campaign, a brute assault on the entire intellectual world..." Ouch.

These Republican authors are suggesting here that the 1964 sorted the "deplorables" into the GOP and everyone else into the Democratic camp. Goldwater and his boosters were making "conservatism" and the GOP a laughing stock that no self-respecting person wanted to ally with.

Their analysis squares with what I saw in the Willamette University student newspaper from 1963-4. The overwhelmingly Republican student body roundly rejected Goldwaterism because they saw it for what it was. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1279812134759575558?s=20

It appears my timing on this thread was impeccable. Will the GOP really dispense with its irresponsible right wingers this time, or will it be 1965 all over again? Stay tuned, I guess. https://twitter.com/replizcheney/status/1390053111587299331

LOL. The GOP must reject the most popular Republican in the country so that we can better accomplish his goal of smashing the radical left socialists who hate America and want to destroy it. Come on man.

Cheney still thinks it’s the conservative fiscal policies that bring the GOP voters to the yard?

At least she had the decency to throw in some culture war BS and border fear-mongering, because surely there are lots of GOP voters who like that stuff but don’t like Trump. Tons of them, I’m sure.