The lefties/Pinkos/stinking COMMIES/Fellow travelers had been after Nixon, too and claw, unceasingly, since he beat Helen Gahagan Douglas, for the Senate Seat. And Ike did less than NOTHING WHATEVER, re that whole thing and the crap thrown at him, resulting in THE CHECKERS SPEECH!
Yet through it all, Nixon never bad mouthed Ike, when it happened, or afterwards.
Ike's help, in '60, might have helped; however, what with the Mafia and Dem rigging, who knows?
The left was after Nixon before that. He took out a beloved leftist New Dealer Democrat Congressman, Jerry Voorhis, in 1946, leading to the GOP winning back Congress for the first time since Hoover. The incident exposing Alger Hiss was one more thing, and defeating fellow leftist Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950 was the cherry on top (nevermind that a lot of non-leftist Dem politicians supported Nixon, and also including Joe Kennedy, Sr. sent $$ to Nixon).
Nixon’s ability to defend himself, the Checkers speech, was pretty good. Ike actually wanted to dump Nixon in 1956 for the Democrat Texan Navy Secretary, Robert Anderson (reading his Wikipedia entry is curious, Ike seemed to have an unusually strong affinity for him, apparently even wanting to draft Anderson against Nixon in ‘60, and then after Anderson refused, trying to strong-arm Nixon into making him his VP running mate). Ike was going to put Nixon at Defense (presumably then he’d dump him altogether).
Nixon was classy for not badmouthing Ike, despite his deserving a good criticism. As for Anderson, who had quite the post-1961 career (he ended up at Defense in lieu of Nixon’s refusal to job swap before then). He was later prosecuted in the 1980s for criminal activity. None other than Rudy Giuliani did the prosecution as U.S. Attorney. Curious how these folks all tie together.