So, killing Cambodians, being anti Semitic, anti-drug, and anti-intellectual is a solely rightwing thing?
Where do I begin?
*Johnson started the war in Vietnam, and while he was not as bad as Nixon, he still holds much of the blame. Johnson was a leftwing President on the modern scale of looking at things, and was certainly at least center-left at the time. You cannot deny that.
*Nixon started the war on drugs, which has been continued by every one of the post Nixon Presidents, liberal and conservative. To be fair, we never really had a very liberal President since Nixon. Obama at best is center-left.
*The nation was generally more leftwing at the time than people remember. Civil Rights, and Labor, as you mentioned, were huge. So Nixon is, as you stated, much more rightwing than the average Democrat or liberal Republican of the time. Compared to the generally mainstream Goldwater-Reagan wing, and the even more extreme Schmitz-Ashbrook-John Bircher wing, he was very moderate. Only barely to the right of Rockefeller.
*Nixon was Lee Atwater before Lee Atwater. He was brutal. No denying it. But do you seriously not believe Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedy clan, and other prominent opponents are just as guilty. It's politics. Of course he smeared his rivals. Everyone does. How does smearing your rivals in a election make you less of a liberal/moderate Republican.
*Just because Nixon was a very bigoted person (ever hear the tape of him speaking about All in the Family with Haldeman?) does not make him any more rightwing. Ever hear of Jesse Jackson? Or is he conservative too?
Nixon was, at the time, and certainly by modern standards, a moderate Republican who would be considered “center right” using simplistic, President Forever 2008 standards. Being a moderate Republican does not automatically make you a great person, as made obvious by Nixon, and as many believe today.
Well, while I do think the original post was great in showing how much of a true demon of a human being Richard Milhous Nixon really was, I must also say that this quote is pure win. Nothing is really more annoying on here than the automatic assumption that all "moderate" and "liberal" Republicans are autoFFs. Actually, and this is pretty shocking to me given the presumption of the word, I tend to find so-called "moderates" to be amongst the worst human beings to enter the realm of US politics, if not human history.
So yes, this is also very good and I nominate it to the Good Post Gallery on pure substance and logic alone.
