Goldwater family remembers senator

PHOENIX, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Barry Goldwater, the late senator from Arizona who shaped the conservative movement, was remembered Thursday on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The Goldwater family planned to lay a wreath at a statue of the senator in Phoenix, The Arizona Republic reported. Goldwater left the Senate in 1987 and died in 1998 at the age of 90.

Barry Goldwater Jr., who served in Congress as a California Republican from 1969 to 1983, told The Republic that his father would have been dismayed at the shape of the modern Republican Party, including its extreme partisanship and hard-line positions on issues like abortion and gay rights.

"Individual liberty, free-market economics and a reliance on individual initiative -- that's the legacy of my father," the younger Goldwater said. "I think he would look upon the party today and probably scold it for narrowing its scope of vision and philosophy to its detriment."

President Lyndon Johnson's overwhelming victory over Goldwater in 1964 seemed to mark the end of his movement. But many prominent conservatives first gained recognition during the campaign, including a future president, Ronald Reagan.