Could This Be Like Nixon In 1972?

President Richard Nixon won a second term in the White House, by being the avenger of left-wing cultural chaos.

Will challenger Mitt Romney win a first term as President, because he provides a similar alternative?

This year’s election will mark the fortieth anniversary of another historic contest. In November of 1972 President Richard Nixon defeated his opponent George McGovern in the Electoral College by a landslide margin of 49 states to 1. Setting the U.S. presidential record for the widest margin of victory among the popular vote, Nixon received nearly 18 million more votes than McGovern.

While Nixon is most often remembered for his downfall and near-impeachment following his second inauguration, his re-election victory – and the cultural conditions that led up to it – was nonetheless dramatic. And in an age where overwhelming majorities believe that America is “heading in the wrong direction,” it’s worth noting how concerns of “right and wrong” shook the election of 40 years ago – and how these concerns might play out this year.

During Nixon’s first term, a great awakening began among a broad sector of the American population. After decades of having been disengaged from politics and public policy debates, and without much in the way of formal organization, millions of faith-based Americans—at that time mostly white, middle-class, Protestant and evangelical Christians—had become increasingly alarmed at the cultural trends and growing civil unrest of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

The challenges to marriage and Judeo-Christian sexual norms posed by the so-called “sexual revolution;” the youthful rebellion against societal authority structures brought about by the so-called “hippie” culture; and the Vietnam War protests by the first generation of American youth who thought it was something less than “honorable” to fight on behalf of the country—all these developments and others proved to be quite unnerving to these millions of Americans.

In the midst of this upheaval, Nixon delivered an important address to the nation during his first term in office, on November 3, 1969. In the speech, Nixon famously made reference to a so-called “silent majority” of Americans—people who supposedly agreed with him on issues of culture, “law and order,” and his desire to fight back against Communism, even though the views of this “silent majority” were largely ignored by political, media, and academic elites.

In using the “silent majority” language, Nixon sought to politically awaken and unify this huge chunk of the American population that had little or no voice in American media and who often did not vote. This sector of American society was very real, and very frustrated by what they believed was a degradation of America and its institutions. Nixon successfully conveyed that he understood those frustrations, and the bond he created with the “silent majority” helped bring about his landslide re-election.

So does today’s cultural upheaval compare to that of 40 years ago? There’s no doubt that the United States of 2012 is quite different from the country Nixon served.

In 1972 the nation’s population was slightly over 200 million, while today there are over 314 million of us. In 1972 over 80% of the American population was White and of European descent. Today, according to some demographic reports, Whites make up as little as 74% of the population, while there is universal agreement that this majority is rapidly eroding.

In 1972 roughly 90% of Americans identified themselves as Christian. Today that figure is approximately 73%, as other religions, and a preference for no religious affiliation at all, become more prevalent.

So the United States of 2012 is more racially and ideologically pluralistic than was Nixon’s America. Yet concerns about the degradation of America are as prevalent today as they were in 1972. And while the radicalized influences that sought to upend the foundations of America were playing out on college campuses and in local communities across the country forty years ago, today they are in the White House, itself, and Americans sense the dangers that this poses.

Despite his promises of unifying America, President Barack Obama has exacerbated our divisions and violated many of our common understandings of right and wrong. When Arizona and Alabama sought two years ago to clarify the rule of law as it regards legal and illegal immigration, our President sided with the U.N., China, the dictator of Venezuela and Mexican President Felipe Calderon in opposing these two states, and then punished the residents there with costly federal lawsuits.

When South Carolina and Florida pursued voter ID laws so as to prevent non-citizens from voting, President Obama sued them to prevent the laws from being implemented. When Ohio sought to streamline early voting for military service personnel, President Obama sued Ohio to stop the troops from voting.

President Obama praises government employees, but calls private business owners “greedy.” As his policies have expanded government dependency, removed the work requirement for welfare, decreased the workforce participation rate and run-up over $5 trillion in deficit spending, he insists that he is moving our country “forward.”

Mr. Obama has undercut our nation’s ally Israel in the Middle East, but calls militant Islamists in the region our “friends” – even as they kill American civilians, military personnel, and a U.S. Ambassador (Christopher Stevens). And while his predecessor oversaw the construction of an offshore detention center (Guantanamo Bay) in which to detain and interrogate foreign terror suspects, President Obama has sought to welcome those very dangerous characters into the domestic U.S. and grant them access to American courts.

Indeed, we are surrounded by left-wing cultural chaos. What was once wrong is now right, and right is now wrong, in Obama’s America. If Mitt Romney can continue to convince America that he is as keenly aware of America’s degradation as millions of the rest of us are, he may find a majority of us standing with him in November.

no way...the nation is 25% less WHITE than it used to be

the youth are actually more liberal today...yes it's true...look at old voting stats and educate yourself

we are barely holding on

folks here as usual in their ignorance will hive five when Romney likely wins in a few weeks

oblivious to the fact that as the years progress our ability to hold off the third world immigration demands and the utter leftist tilt of our culture will become harder and harder to hold back

this election we are nearing the point where we have to have nearly 2/3rds of WHITES vote in one direction to hold off the other demographic groups

even that will become not enough in time

we voluntarily let this happen...we either as a nation surrender and go leftist and even more politically correct about race or we actually fight down the road

because when the minority really does become the majority...does anyone here truly believe they will show such magnanimity towards those they feel formerly oppressed them?

it will be the second Reconstruction and the end of America as we know it.

i have watched this happen for many years

the Silent Majority battened the hatches

The GOP and the Scoop Jackson and Hard Hat Hippie Hating dems held the hard left back

the Moral Majority pushed back...

now we have the ever dwindling Majority doing the task and the wave against us grows bigger and bigger and we get smaller

we cannot turn enough of the other side in time...not with the culture we live in

people get ready and don't be sedated by a win by a milquetoast defender...it's just a small tactical win in a very long war..a war which we are short on troops and ammo and giving up territory daily

President Richard Nixon won a second term in the White House, by being the avenger of left-wing cultural chaos.

Will challenger Mitt Romney win a first term as President, because he provides a similar alternative?

No. If Romney wins it will be because voters have lost faith in Obama on the economy. It might be like 1980 or 1992 or 1976 or 1932.

But even if the election will be about "left wing cultural chaos," the relevant comparison would not be to 1972, but to 1968, when the challenger scraped in because of social issues, rather than to the landslide reelection of an incumbent.

“One more point about Watergate: it’s very possible the whole thing was an entrapment set up by the dems”

It wasn’t that at all. The Watergate burglary was hatched and set in motion by John Dean all on his own. He wanted to recover a ‘date book’ that belonged to a prostitution ring being run out of the DNC offices. The reason Dean wanted that book is due to the fact that his girlfriend/fiance Mo Dean was in that book, because she had been working as a high priced call girl when Dean met her. Nixon had the bad fortune of turning over his own investigation to the very man who had plotted the breakin. And when the Watergate Committee began closing in on the White House Dean ran to them and blamed Nixon in order to save his own worthless hide.

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