Nixon and the Silent Majority

• Expand lecture to include rise of grass-roots right in 60s

The Voting Rights Act, 1965“I think we just gave the South to the Republicans for your lifetime and mine”

The Grass-roots Right

• Strength in West and South• Suburban communities• Focus on school boards, local organisation• Inheriting the language of McCarthyism:

subversion, conspiracy plus Christianity, individualism, patriotism, military strength

• Intellectual foundations: William F. Buckley’s National Review

• Organisational inspiration: The John Birch Society

William F. Buckley, Jr.

The Grass-roots Right

“The power of individuals is limitless. The time has come for people to cease looking for great organizations afar off and to begin looking for things that can be done close to home. Every man who invites a friend into his home, gives him literature to read, and informs him of the danger, is helping to thwart the Communist program.”

Contexts for emergence of grass-roots right

• marginalisation of conservatives in national politics and in GOP

• Civil Rights movement• Great Society• Cuban revolution• Supreme Court: school prayer• UN and internationalism

Nixon’s conservatism

• Silent Majority strategy

• Conservative appointment to Supreme Court: Berger, Rehnquist, Blackmun, Powell

• New Federalism

• OEO abolished, many War on Poverty programmess slashed

RN’s liberal credentials?

• Environmental Protection Agency• Occupational Safety and Health

Administration• Consumer Products Safety Commission• Proposed Family Assistance Plan (influence

of D. P. Moynihan)• Economic Stabilisation Act, 1970 – freeze

on prices and wages in autumn 1971

Foreign Policy

Nixon in China, 1972

Détente with the Soviets

“McGovern has an aura of conviction and simplicity” (Time magazine)

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House elections 1972

John Mitchell

John Dean

H. R. Haldeman

John Ehrlichman

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office. August 8, 1974.

“Our long national nightmare is over”http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/election/index.php?nav_action=election&nav_subaction=overview&campaign_id=170