Well, if Trump is the Republican nominee, he could lose in a Goldwater-like fashion, but any comparisons to Goldwater should stop there. Goldwater was not a nut. He was a clear thinker. He knew what he believed and why he believed it, and his views were shaped by facts and a commitment to something bigger than himself.

Before his entry into politics, Goldwater had been a small-town businessman and a seasoned Air Force pilot in World War II and later in the reserves. He became a national political figure with the 1960 publication of a well-defined political manifesto via his book, “The Conscience of a Conservative.” The grass-roots movement that resulted in his presidential nomination in 1964 grew from a broad, principled ideological view that was largely based on the ideas in Goldwater’s book: opposition to communism via the promotion of capitalism and opposition to New Deal policies because they were unmanageable and beyond the scope of what the federal government should do.

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Goldwater’s crusade was always about more than just Goldwater. He was a principled leader who organized an American political party to lead the world’s fight against communism and promote free-market economic policies at home and abroad. It would actually be more accurate to compare Goldwater and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) as distant ideological cousins. Trump doesn’t do policy very well, so it’s very hard to tell where he is coming from. But it’s safe to say he and Goldwater have little in common, either in their personal approach to politics, their economic point of view or their foreign policy.