Don’t forget, Nixon defeated Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950 for California senator. They had it in for him ever since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gahagan_Douglas
In a race that was remembered as one of the most vicious in California political history, Nixon’s charges were intentionally directed towards the character assassination of Gahagan Douglas.[18] Nixon implied that she was a Communist “fellow traveler” by comparing her votes to those of the far-left, pro-Soviet Representative Vito Marcantonio, and deployed anti-Semitic surrogates to call on voters to reject her because her husband, Melvyn, was Jewish.[18]
Additionally, Nixon was instrumental in the exposure of Alger Hiss, the favorite of the State Department elite who had infested that agency since the New Deal, as a Soviet agent. The liberals wanted their revenge and obtained it in 1974, when Nixon resigned under threat of conviction on the impeachment charges.