Excerpted by Nicholas Stix
Congratulations to Pat Buchanan, on the imminent publication of his new book!
Although I can’t take credit for getting Buchanan to write this book, I did send him an e-mail a few years ago, urging him to write a book on Nixon, arguing that he was uniquely positioned, in terms not just of intellect, but in terms of having worked closely with the man for many years, as a top aide. I also publicly urged Buchanan to write a Nixon book. I’m sure that from many other well-wishers, not to mention friends and associates also urged him to write such a book.
If memory serves, the New York office Nixon set up following his defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election to Edmund “Jerry” Brown Sr. in 1962, was composed of Himself, a very young Pat Buchanan, and “Miss Ryan” (to callers), better known as Mrs. Pat Nixon.
As I have maintained for years, Nixon was—for better or worse—a liberal Republican, and as liberal as they came on race. Buchanan argues likewise, but his argument is, of course, much better-informed than mine.
Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and a Liberal Big Lie
By Patrick J. Buchanan
July 3, 2014
VDARE
“For the first time since President Richard M. Nixon’s divisive ‘Southern strategy’ that sent whites to the Republican Party and blacks to the Democrats …” began a New York Times story last week.
Thus has one of the big lies of U.S. political history morphed into a cliché —that Richard Nixon used racist politics to steal the South from a Democratic Party battling heroically for civil rights….
Where Teddy Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner, Woodrow Wilson re-segregated the U.S. government and had the pro-Klan film “Birth of a Nation” screened in his White House.
Wilson and FDR carried all 11 states of the Old Confederacy all six times they ran, when Southern blacks had no vote. Disfranchised black folks did not seem to bother these greatest of liberal icons.
As vice president, FDR chose “Cactus Jack” Garner of Texas who played a major role in imposing a poll tax to keep blacks from voting.
Among FDR’s Supreme Court appointments was Hugo Black, a Klansman…
The Democratic Party was the party of slavery, secession and segregation…
And Nixon?
In 1956, as vice president, Nixon went to Harlem to declare, “America can’t afford the cost of segregation.” The following year, Nixon got a personal letter from Dr. King thanking him for helping to persuade the Senate to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Nixon supported the civil rights acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968.
In the 1966 campaign, as related in my new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority,” out July 8, Nixon blasted Dixiecrats “seeking to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.” [November 7, 1966]…
Richard Nixon desegregated the Southern schools, something you won’t learn in today’s public schools.
For history is a pack of lies agreed upon.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book, The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority.
[Read the whole thing here.]
PJB really has a severe blind side when it comes to Nixon. Probably because Nixon gave PJB his first White House job. But this doesn't mean he gets things seriously wrong because he constructs an alternate reality inside the event horizon of a black hole bubble when it comes to Nixon. The worst part about it is that PJB contradicts himself and his own image and worldview when he gets into Nixon apologetics.
ReplyDeleteI'll dissect this column later.
I fear you may be right. Buchanan loved the Nixons and, I believe, will feel great personal loyalty to them 'til the day he dies. He also has an undying affection for Reagan, but was never personally close to Reagan, the he was to Nixon.
ReplyDeleteWas there any precedent for that? A young man, at the beginning of his professional career, toiling away for a "disgraced," "failed" politician, who helps him return to power, and show up all his enemies, before they succeed in retaliating, and destroying him politically yet again. The
In any event, I look forward to reading the book, and hope that he hasn't let his personal loyalty cloud his judgement.
I was a college freshman in the fall of 1968 and followed that year's presidential race closely. Oddly, I was then slightly liberal and favored Bobby Kennedy prior to his assassination and Humphrey in November.
ReplyDeleteNixon was indeed something of a liberal Republican but the liberal establishment (not to mention the hard left) hated him bitterly.
One, Nixon was right about Alger Hiss and was rough on the Democrats in his early national campaigns.
Two, the establishment hated Nixon for being a man of the lower middle class who wasn't from the Ivy League.
In Richard Whalen's book, "Catch The Falling Flag," Whalen wrote that Nixon and his Middle American voters threatened the liberal establishment's status as an antidemocratic elite.
As Countenance says, PJB has a blind spot with Nixon. Both fully returned the animus from the establishment, which is why PJB has an enduring loyalty to Nixon.
David In TN
Nitpick: Edmund G. Brown was nicknamed "Pat". Jerry is the son.
ReplyDelete