I agree. I also cheered when he went after the NVA in Cambodia and bombed the livin' $hit out of Hanoi.
Monica Crowley wrote two books about Nixon which I recommend.
and 
Posted on 01/09/2013 8:07:32 AM PST by Perdogg
Wednesday is the 100th anniversary of Richard Nixon's birth. He remains a controversial figure, and not just on the political left. Last year, I was covering the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington when I came across a stall selling old political pins. Unable to resist, I bought one with a picture of Tricky Dick giving his best crocodile smile beneath the classic slogan "Nixon's The One!"
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
If CNN’s saying it, then the answer has to be no. Figured they would love an expander of government (EPA, OSHA, Amtrak et al).
Nixon was no friend to the conservative movement (the heck with the fact that he was a mobbed-up crook). Nixon was second only to FRD is ushering the nanny state and big government with the establishment of the DEA and the war on drugs and the EPA and the war on the Detroit auto industry.
Hell no. EPA, flirting with price controls, OSHA, etc. he was a disaster.
Nixon was by no means a conservative on the domestic side. However, he new the media and the Democrats were a bunch of SOB’s. This is a fact that alludes much of the GOP today.
Blah blah blah, I get to read all the FR purists who don’t know their rears from their elbows about Nixon.
Nixon fought the left. He knew they were his enemy. He took no crap. The country was in leftist revolution, he stood up to that. What he dealt with makes today look like a tea party (the type with fine china).
Yes he made some mistakes like wage and price controls, because he was a bold leader. But the left HATED him which is why he was destroyed (that and his stupid totally unneccessary corruption).
Of course if he were a democrat, Watergate would be remembered as a “witch hunt”.
When asked why he did so, he gave the response "What is the use of power if you can't wield it?" So typical of the political ruling class.
That being said, Nixon at least had a sense of shame and didn't hate his country. BO is sorely lacking on both counts.
and
The thing I was surprsied to learn was how much dislike Nixon and Reagan had for each other. In fact, Reagan and Rockefeller teamed up to try to deny him the nomination in 1968.
“Nixon at least had a sense of shame and didn’t hate his country. BO is sorely lacking on both counts.”
Well said! Agreed.
The only reason the left didn’t LOVE Nixon was his anti-communist background. The fact that he governed like an extreme radical lefty didn’t impress them after that.
And that is exactly what he should be remembered for. When the whole country was swooning over Camelot and singing kumbaya, Nixon had identified the enemies that were infiltrating our institutions and was one of a small group fighting to hold them off. His enemies list were not his political foes but domestic enemies of the country he defending. They were the harbingers of the marxists that now have us under their thumb.
Nixon took us off the Gold Standard and he normalized relatioins with Communist China. If I’m not mistaken he established the EPA.
Aside from that, he was a pretty good President. Too bad RINOs first exhibited a yellow streak by bolting from him over Watergate. The Media demonstrated once again how leftist they were by attcking him over it.
Considering what the Dems have done and still do, that was really small potatoes.
Nixon pretty much was a liberal...and would even be considered such by todays Liberal RINOs in the GOP
The Democrats/Liberals hated Nixon because he Co-Opted their ideas....not because he was “Conservative”.
That is not being “Purist”, that is being “Realist”
The bombings did nothing to create "social anarchy," as they were aimed at Communist forces. The Khmer Rouge was set up by North Vietnam, which began infiltrating Cambodia in the mid-1960's and then launched a full-scale invasion of the country in 1970.
Despite his liberal domestic record, Nixon will always inhabit the dog house of the Left because he saved Israel in 1973.
Let’s see - Nixon started the EPA, OSHA, got us off the Gold Standard - he’s not a model for anything resembling conservatism. The SOB should have ordered carpet bombing Hanoi when Jane was there.
Nixon got Alger Hiss. That’s the main reason the Left has hated him. Nixon validated, in his way, McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities committee.
Nixon exposed the communists in the FDR and Truman administrations. Nixon’s world anti-communism was nowhere near as threatening to the Progressive movement as the leftist pinko commies infiltrating our own government.
Nixon exposed that soft underbelly in our government that persists to this day with communists and radical Islamists.
Exposing the pervasive insidious Godless subterranean sprawl of leftist radicalism is the ultimate unforgivable political sin.
It wasn’t just the EPA and the DEA he created but he also was responsible for legislation through rule making, and more broadly usurped the role of Congress for enacting laws to give it to regulators. Nixon is rightly blamed for the trend of Congress righting broad laws which would be filled in with details at the regulatory level.
I do admit that the environment was in a mess in the early 1970s but man did he create an agency which he gave broad authority to.
I’ll never forgive him for destroying the muscle car era though.
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