Oct. 7, 1964 - Senator Barry Goldwater delivered a ringing denunciation of socialism, unilateral disarmament, and scandal in government today to a screaming, chanting throng of about 6,000 admirers in Convention Hall in Asbury Park, N.J.
The Republican presidential nominee’s remarks were drowned out repeatedly by shouts from his own supporters, many of them teenagers, and from a balcony-based cheering sector of Lyndon B. Johnson partisans.
“I will be speaking for the remainder of the campaign,” Goldwater said, “for the forgotten American, the 95% majority who ask nothing of the federal government but honesty, a fair shake, and an understanding of what’s going on.”
He said he will speak for Americans “who don’t look forward to a life where the government tells them what to do every day, who insist on standing on their own feet.”
The vast majority of Americans, the Senator said, do not belong to any “special privilege groups” but are “just good Americans trying to get ahead on their own initiative, asking no handouts from the federal government, willing to do for themselves, or if they can’t, to ask their local, county, or state governments for help — they don’t believe the first and last answer is in Washington.”
A mysterious core of Johnson advocates stationed themselves in the center of the balcony and heckled Goldwater as he addressed the vociferously admiring throng.
The Johnson team seemed to be directed from the floor by a man with a radio, but efforts to reach him failed in the crush. Many of those doing the heckling refused to give their names, and others carrying Johnson banners and cards denied being in the balcony when questioned outside the hall. One said, “We’re here because we want to be here, and the names don’t matter.”
Republican Assembly Speaker Alfred N. Beadleston of Monmouth called the Johnson hecklers “bad-mannered. They’re certainly not the kind of people who made our country great. They’ll probably grow up and sell the country down the river.”
Others in the crowd heckled the hecklers, commenting, “Who let you out of school?,” “Does your mother know you’re out?,” and “I’d like to spank them.”
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