He annoyed liberals no end and kept Democrats out of the White House for eight years, something neither Carter nor Wilson ever accomplished.
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True that. But would the left have so completely captured the Democratic party without Nixon?
Nixon wasn’t all that polarizing along ideological lines. The left always gravitated to the Democratic Party, at least since the days of FDR. The influence of the left has been amplified by the unwarranted expansion of “higher education” (cruel misnomer!) and the ethos of the scribbling classes.
The Left hated Nixon because, unlike McGovern, he did not intend to lose the Vietnam War. Actually, if the Democrats in Congress had honored our pledges to South Vietnam, we would not have lost it, either.