Goldwater, along with Mark Hatfield, are maybe my two favorite Senate Republicans post-WWII but even I feel like he'd tell you privately to use your noggin over that vote. He voted for every other Civil Rights Act except for the one that was in the news just as he was trying to win the GOP nomination on the backs of an energized conservative movement that was staunchly opposed to it?
IIRC, it's not the only bill his voting record takes a sharp "social conservative" turn on suddenly that year only to revert back on post-election.
Kinda like Johm McCain 40 some years later.
That gets to the heart of what I mean. Goldwater's held up as emblematic of a lost conservatism of deeply held philosophical principles, in contrast with the current version that's been corrupted by some nasty cultural resentments, as if the "energized conservative movement" of the time wasn't deeply intertwined with the backlash against the the advances in civil rights.
His CRA vote gets excused or even praised cause it was so deeply gut-wrenching for him to harm other people who weren't him or his constituency, but god dammit he had to cause of his Principles. It's not as bad as the Bill Buckley fandom, but I find it pretty grody.
Also, let's not pump up his civil rights record outside of that. The earlier acts were pretty famously toothless, and after he re-joined the Senate he had multiple did-not-votes on extensions of the Voting Rights Act. His record might be better than almost anyone else who could be plausibly claimed by movement conservatism, but that's more an indictment of them than a point in his favor.
