In 1960, he took his family to Spain for the first time, making him absent from the Palm Beach decision of Buckley, Goldwater, Russell Kirk, and William Baroody Sr. to freeze out the John Birch Society from the conservative movement. Kirk inferred that Bozell would not have had any reason to be opposed to the decision, but, in fact, he, along with Frank Meyer and William Rusher, protested the exclusion of the Society from the conservative movement. After the failed attempt to draft Goldwater at the 1960 Republican National Convention, Bozell, a strong proponent of a Goldwater candidacy, was disappointed and annoyed by the would-be candidate's firm endorsement of the moderate Richard Nixon–Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. ticket. In 1962, addressing an 18,500 strong conservative rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden, he issued a rhetorical order to the Berlin commander, "Tear down the Berlin Wall," which would be echoed more famously 25 years later by Ronald Reagan, who exhorted Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!"