A Time for Choosing

I saw Barry Goldwater introduced to the Republican Party by Ronald Reagan back when I was nine years old.

the famous speech, Time for Choosing, and the logic that I heard in that speech, I went to my mom, I said, Mom, I'm a conservative, and I've been a conservative ever since.

Luckily, I saw the Beatles before that, so I had a career in music rather than politics.

But I've always had an affinity and as a hobby just watching what's happening politically.

By every measurement the party establishment cared about, Goldwater was a disaster.

It's a week before that election, a former actor gave a television speech for Goldwater called A Time for Choosing.

And a whole lot of people sitting in their living rooms said, hey, who's that guy? The campaign lost and the speech didn't.

That's the seed.

The speech was this national television address that Ronald Reagan delivered on behalf of Barry Goldwater a few weeks before the 1964 election.

The campaign bought half an hour of airtime for Reagan to deliver the speech, which was called it a time for choosing, but became known simply as the speech.

And it was really Ronald Reagan's debut on the national political stage.

And it was this brilliant piece of oratory that, in fact, in many ways, overshadowed Barry Goldwater, because Reagan made the case for Goldwater better than Goldwater could make it for himself.

I, uh, w- you know, grew up as a conservative.

I saw Barry Goldwater introduced to the world by Ronald Reagan when I was nine years old with the famous speech of A Time for Choosing.

Mm.

And I've, I've...

I've wanted him to run for president as early as 1988.

In 1988, when we visited New Hampshire together, kinda dipping his toe in the water, in that speech he said, "No matter what, Iran can never be allowed to have a nuclear bomb." This is not some new position of his.

This is not something he came up with yesterday.

This is not at variance with what he said during the last election or the 2020 election or the 2016 election, and therefore he's, he's m- had to make a very hard decision.

But this I can tell you, if the left takes control of America, the censorship of shows like this, shows like mine, uh, shows like, uh, like many that in your audience watch, will, will go, will go back to being censored.

What they did to Robert Kennedy was outrageous.

His speech to the Republican midterm convention, I told him this, uh, he's a good friend of mine, uh, his speech was one of the most powerful political speeches I have ever heard.

I rank it up there with Ronald Reagan's famous speech, A Time For Choosing, uh, for Barry Goldwater, which is the speech that put Reagan on the map and on the trail to the White House, strangely enough, uh, as one of the most powerful speeches I've ever heard, up there with Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech.