With the bit about Nixon coming in the news lately it got me to thinking. People are saying the Tea Party has taken the Republicans in the wrong direction.
But on the Conservative to Liberal scale, and I realize everyone has their own view on what that is, just what would Mr Nixon’s poltics be viewed as today.
In other words, if you took his poltical stands on issues, and put them in today’s climate. Would he be very conservative a moderate Republican or what?
I wasn’t around when Mr Nixon was president and reading isn’t as good as people that lived through his administration, at least in my opinion.
Also I realize this isn’t really a great debate, but it says to put political questions here, so feel free to move it to some place, if it’s a better fit
He would be wherever would be best for an amoral opportunist. But that might well be the same today as 1968; appealing openly to the Middle, but subtextually to the Right, and pragmatically to the Left.
He would have no place in today’s Republican party, basically. Hell, he’d probably be considered fairly liberal in the Democratic party of today, for that matter. This is all assuming he held the same positions and did the same things he did when he was elected and didn’t bend or conform to the changing political winds and pressure from his base. Basically I don’t think he’d be electable as President today (in either party), even without all of the negative baggage he managed to accumulate in his political career. The fact that he’d dead would also have a somewhat negative impact on his chances, of course.
I disagree. While Nixon may have been corrupt and personally reprehensible; his ruthlessness was in pursuit of a “higher good” – what he thought was best for America. Similar statements apply to other great Presidents, e.g. LBJ. Frankly, I prefer such politicians to the morally bankrupt, short-term oriented politicians increasingly common today.
Answering OP’s question, mainstream Republicans from the Rational Era were to the “left” of today’s Democrat Party on many issues. Attempting to compare them with today’s “Republican Party” shows gross misconception.
If Fox News and the rest are to be believed, it is this foreigner’s considered opinion that his positions would get hanged for treason. Founded EPA, got the US off the gold standard, opened up China, managed to withdraw from Vietnam wanted UHC.
He was definitely not a free market kind of guy. It was the days of command economies and Keynes ruled the roost uncontested (Nixon was a huge Keynesian…but then so were most politicians at that time, regardless of whether they were Pub or Crat). Like I said, by today’s standards Nixon (leaving aside all the slimy negative baggage) would have been considered a moderately liberal Democrat…more liberal than, say, Mr. Obama.
Nixon would have moved to the right along with the party. He was dragged kicking and screaming to most of his liberal-ish stances. He was also a nasty SOB that would have been on the more racist / anti-semetic wing of the modern GOP, though he probably would hide those parts of himself. The OP makes the mistake of assuming Nixon (or most politicians) had principles to begin with.
If we just time-machined him to today, he’d fit it fairly well after a few years to get acclimated. Eisenhower on the other hand would be toast.