It’s still Richard Nixon’s party: How Watergate shaped the modern conservative movement

[DonViejo]

Unfazed by Tricky Dick's resignation, the right doubled down on his politics of grievance and division

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

When your own lawyer calls it “ratfucking,” it might be time to think twice about what you’re doing.

The man who didn’t think twice, of course, was President Richard Nixon, who on August 9, 1974, became the first president in American history to resign. But rather than serving as a cautionary tale, his tactics became the playbook for Movement Conservatives.

The roots of Nixon’s political descent lay at least as far back as May 1970, when the shooting of four young Americans at Kent State University began to turn the president’s moderate supporters against him. As the nation recoiled from the sight of a young woman screaming over a murdered friend and the father of one of the victims asked how such a thing could have happened in America, Nixon declared the protesters “bums” and blamed the students themselves for the violence that had taken their lives. His stance deliberately divided the nation into “us” and them,” expanding a theme he had begun the previous year. In 1969, as protests against the Vietnam War mounted, he had given a speech pleading for Americans to support his policies, calling on the “Silent Majority” to support him against “a vocal minority” imposing their views over “reason and the will of the majority” by protesting in the streets. With the Kent State shootings, he expanded the idea of a silent majority against a vocal minority to argue that it was imperative for good Americans — the ones who supported the president — to hold the line against young radicals, civil rights activists and feminists, all “special interests” determined to destroy America.

Nixon’s fear that radicals and special interests were trying to undermine his presidency — and thus America — reached new heights in June 1971, when the New York Times began to publish what became known as the Pentagon Papers. This secret government study detailing American involvement in Vietnam concluded that presidents from Truman to Johnson had lied to the American people about the war. While the study ended before the Nixon administration, Nixon thought the leak by Daniel Ellsberg, who worked on the study, revealed a conspiracy to undermine his Vietnam policy. If people leaked the same sort of information about him — and there was plenty to leak — they would destroy his administration and hand the 1972 election to a Democrat.

The drive to “screw” his enemies began to consume Nixon. When the FBI did not seem to be aggressive enough in hunting down the supposed conspirators, the president put together a Special Investigations Unit out of the White House to stop leaks — thus they were called “plumbers.” The plumbers burglarized the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in California, hoping to find something to discredit Ellsberg, then they moved on to bigger targets. By January 1972, the Committee to Reelect the President, dubbed CREEP as its misdeeds came out, sabotaged opponents before the 1972 election. Their “ratfucking” as they put it, involved planting fake letters in newspapers, hiring vendors for Democratic rallies and then ignoring the unpaid bills and planting spies in opponent’s camps. Finally, on June 17, 1972, they set out to wiretap the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.’s fashionable Watergate office complex.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/08/08/its_still_richard_nixons_party_how_watergate_shaped_the_modern_conservative_movement/

[GoneFishin]

1. "Nixon's mistake was not the break in. His mistake was getting caught." was a popular meme

used by Republicans to brainwash the public that honesty and integrity are not that important in politics.

Most Republicans and a growing number of Democrats now base their campaign strategies on the knowledge that the public now accepts dirty tricks in politics.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Couple of other points.

Nixon and his Aides new the power of the Media and there in lies today's Politic. Lee Atwater and other,at the time,unknown spin misters,Carl Rove,Roger Ailies and Frank Luntz,honed their propagandizing messages and methods while everyone was chasing Deep Throat.

Another little bit. Nixon used Roves little obscure company to develop the use of Direct Mailers. And we now know how that has become the death nail for any Candidate with limited resources,being attacked by his opponent , using a false equivalency mailer on the last weekend before elections.