Using Fear Tactics in a Presidential Race is Nothing New

Remember when Barry Goldwater was running for office and Lyndon Johnson’s campaign did the TV commercial of a little girl picking daisies in a field, when she looks up and sees a mushroom cloud.

That was all the viewer needed to see to know that Barry Goldwater would get them into a nuclear war and the cute little girl running through the daisies would be vaporized.

Those were the years following the Cuban missile crisis, duck and cover, bomb shelters, psychological manipulation of kids, and scaring them to death into thinking they would not survive a nuclear war It was a scare tactic of the disarmament group to keep us stuck in the standoff of Mutually Assured Destruction while opposing a strengthened defense.

The Strategic Defense Initiative was maligned as being offensive against our very gentle and peaceful cold war adversaries. Even President Carter’s daughter Amy said her greatest fear was nuclear proliferation.

So the liberals effectively lobbied against allowing Americans to defend themselves miliarily… very much like they are lobbying now to prevent Americans from defending themselves individually. The scene has changed but the players and plot are the same.