Ever been sitting around listening to music, and a song comes on, and you're like, "Yes. This is amazing. This song perfectly describes every emotion swirling around in my brain right now. How did this band know exactly what I was thinking and feeling?" And all of a sudden, they're your favorite band and you've downloaded all of their songs and you go to all of their shows because you simply cannot get enough of their music?

Well, that's kind of how Barry Goldwater made a lot of 1960s conservatives feel.

Since FDR's New Deal, the Republican Party platform had been sliding inch by inch to the left: support for a larger federal government and enhanced federal programs was becoming the norm, and debates weren't about how to reduce government spending as much as they were about where the money should be spent.

All those Republicans who'd joined the party because they liked the idea of minimal, limited government found themselves with almost no representation.

But then along came Barry Goldwater, this Westerner, this crazy Senator from Arizona, and those conservatives found themselves a new hero.

Barry wasn't shy about his ideas, and when he published The Conscience of a Conservative in 1960, he earned himself a pretty substantial cult following all over the country. Book clubs everywhere were discussing his political views over coffee; college students were debating his philosophies at the bar.

Goldwater's ideas maybe don't generate quite as much excitement and debate today as they did then, but that's not because people have forgotten them.

Quite the opposite, actually.

While in 1964, Goldwater's conservatism was considered by many to be kind of radical and out there, today a lot of those viewpoints are widely held and accepted by political conservatives across the nation. What are those viewpoints? Limited government. Economic freedom. Strong national defense, even if we never use it. And a focus on keeping federal laws out of a person's personal life.

In 1964, Barry's goal was to spread the message of conservatism, thinking that the Republican Party needed to be reminded of what it was all about. But if the viewpoints above don't sound uniquely Republican, that's because pieces of Goldwater's conservative message can be found in other parties' political platforms as well, like liberalism (think gay rights and abortion rights), and libertarianism (think states' rights). In fact, even though Barry belonged to the Republican Party for the duration of his adult life, he's been "claimed" by liberals and libertarians alike.

Maybe this guy really is the most consequential loser in American politics.