Barry Goldwater

Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential election by a landslide and still changed the Republican Party more than most winners. His campaign shifted power from the party's moderate north-eastern establishment to conservative activists in the South and West, and his vote against the Civil Rights Act helped him carry five Deep South states that had voted Democratic for generations. The volunteers his campaign recruited, Ronald Reagan among its speakers, formed the movement that captured the party sixteen years later.