On September 29, 1965,
candidate Reagan addressed the New England Federation of Republican Women in Boston. Reagan sounded his already-familiar theme of
smaller government, reporting that when asked if he is afraid of his own
government, he now replied, “…to tell you the truth, I am.”
Reagan attacked President
Johnson’s poverty program as, “a $1.8 billion campaign fund for the
[Democratic] party” and called on Republicans to “wage a thousand wars on
poverty, all fought within the framework of our free economy.”
Whether due to the fact that he was speaking in
a state that voted for Lyndon Johnson by a margin of more than one million
votes, or out of a desire to cultivate intraparty unity amongst the California
GOP, Reagan rejected the label of being a “Goldwater Republican,” noting, “I
did nothing for Sen. Goldwater in 1964 that I didn’t do in 1960 for Mr. Nixon.”
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