Passion. Betrayal. Truth. Lies. Love. War. The search for identity in a changing world.

Are we describing The Lion King? Pride and Prejudice? Desperate Housewives?

Nope, we're talking about the 1964 Republican National Convention.

The Republican presidential nomination that year went to Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona, who eventually got epically slaughtered in the general election by incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson.

But before all that happened, there was a primary season. And it was a nasty one.

Our major players on the right side of the aisle were Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., John Byrnes, and William Scranton (and if a few of those names are ringing a bell, they totally should). While most political contests are passionate and enthusiastic, 1964 was the year that passion and enthusiasm brought their A-game to the Republican crowd.

Why so crazy?

Because the Republican Party was going through a huge identity crisis, and it was pulling itself apart at the seams. Since it formed in 1850, the GOP had been identified and united by a common distrust of big government and a dedication to the cause of individual freedom. But ever since FDR and his New Deal, some members of the party had begun to find themselves on opposite sides of the fence.

Some Republicans had come to realize the benefits of government-sponsored programs, and their political stance became more moderate. The rest of the Republicans, horrified by FDR's programs getting all up in their personal space, dug in as "true conservatives," and this fissure in the party grew and grew...

…Until it exploded during the 1964 presidential primary.

Eventually, the minefield—we mean, field—narrowed to two main contenders: Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater. Nelson Rockefeller, or "Rocky" as his squad called him, was a moderate Republican.

Barry Goldwater was decidedly not.

As it so happened, most Republican voters weren't looking for a moderate in 1964. They didn't want more of the same, more of the "Me Too Republicanism" that folks like Rocky embraced. They wanted someone who slapped down the ever-expanding federal waistline with a wag of the finger and said, "Not today, federal government."

And so they chose Barry. He gave a barnburner of an acceptance speech that laid out his rock-solid conservative principles and presented a vision of the nation where the Constitution really ruled, freedom rang, budgets were balanced, the military was strong, and the government butted out of people's (and businesses') lives. If only we could get to that, Goldwater insisted, the rest would take care of itself.

And even though he got absolutely creamed in the general election, Goldwater's ideas are still, so many years later, the backbone for a pretty substantial portion of the Republican Party (and some libertarians, too).

We bet Desperate Housewives won't have that kind of staying power.

They say that history is written by the winners. Today we're here to spread the news that sometimes—maybe not all the time, but sometimes—history is actually written by the losers.

In this case, history was written by a straight-talking, bourbon-drinking, outdoors-loving store manager-slash-pilot-slash-radio-operator from Phoenix, Arizona. His name was Barry Goldwater, and his mission was to save his beloved Republican Party.

Actually, that's not true.

What he really wanted to do, when he wasn't fixing gadgets or flying airplanes, was make sure his beloved home state remained as awesome as it had always been. It was this desire that ended up dropping him into political races, first for Phoenix's City Council, then for the U.S. Senate, and eventually for U.S. President in 1964.

Sometimes, there isn't much to be learned from studying the person who didn't become President. That isn't the case here. Barry Goldwater not only defined modern conservatism, he also set the stage for a guy named Ronald Reagan to come up and leave his own mark on the country. Many loved him, many hated him, and the Republican Party was forever changed by his deep convictions… and his complete lack of verbal filter.

This speech is a fantastic synopsis of his whole philosophy: keep government small, keep defense strong, freedom rocks. If it's Barry's brand of American conservatism we want to wrap our brains around, the path starts with this speech.

George Will called Goldwater the "man who lost forty-four states but won the future" (source). Reagan's election, the Republican 1994 recapture of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years, the Tea Party—all can be traced back to Goldwater's conservative brand. Goldwater always believed that most Americans, if they were honest about it, were conservatives at heart. It was up to him and his no-holds-barred approach, to get them to admit it.

Climb aboard and strap in; it's gonna be a turbulent flight.