Matt Cloud

@conzmoleman @drposhlost @as_a_worker twitter.com/realmattcloud/… Meet "our KGB interlocutor" #MoynihanWasDeepThroat

@PincherMartin8 "getting the Left to hate Nixon" to which I should add "WHILE getting Nixon to implement the Left's policies."

@PincherMartin8 "Tory men and Whig measure are what has changed the world."

Nixon was moderate to liberal on civil rights, liberal on government spending, and eventually became an accommodationist with the global communists (Mao, Brezhnev) for the sake of peace. So why did liberals hate Nixon so much? Because the early Nixon was probably the most effective politician in the country at using the red issue to both target his political opponents and root out genuine communists. And the left never forgave him for it.

@PincherMartin8 or philosophy if you like most responsible for Nixon's ouster, and the dominant political movement in the US (and the West) ever since.

@PincherMartin8 It can even be said that Trump continues the Watergate two-step, if not Nixonianism itself, but casting himself as vilified and persecuted as Nixon, yet doing little structurally in remedy. Trump II as has been observed elsewhere is a neo-con admin effectively, the "group"

@PincherMartin8 Thanks. Dinner calls.

@realmattcloud I think the early Reagan years saw a genuine movement to try and repeal parts of the Great Society, but it was hampered by a Congress which didn't want to revisit those policies and by a president whose executive vigor didn't match his ideological fervor.

@PincherMartin8 Nixon had no intention of reversing liberalism. Not in 68 or in 72, and it couldn't be done by then anyway, for the reasons I have already explained. This is and has been my point.

This I agree with. Nixon consolidated the Great Society. But given his thin margin of victory in 1968, his temperament, and most importantly the large Democratic majorities he was working with, he had little choice. It would've been nice, however, to see a conservative president go down fighting rather than meekly submit.

@PincherMartin8 That's good that you don't agree because I never said that. Later Republicans -- actual players I mean -- had no intention of meaningfully repealing liberalism. As you point out, when that happened it was from Clinton (welfare reform).

@realmattcloud Agreed. Nixon was open to liberal policies. I don't agree that this approach by Nixon poisoned the well for later Republicans.

@PincherMartin8 Off to a bad start. The policies of the Great Society are actually not what I was discussing. And you weren't either. The topic is Nixon's policies.

No, I don't think this is accurate. The policies of the Great Society stand because the right was later unable to successfully counter them with policies that would take their place. But this had nothing to do with Nixon. If he had been a conservative and fought against the Great Society from 1969 to 1974 rather than extended and strengthened it, he still would've lost. Most street-corner conservatives today also think Nixon was a conservative, which shows us how well informed they are. They don't even look at his policies when making that determination. They just assume it based on vibes.

@PincherMartin8 "I'm not defensive." "I welcome the opportunity to counter[-attack.]"

@PincherMartin8 ...

@PincherMartin8 The Nixon admin, in short, was actually a liberal consolidation.

@PincherMartin8 3/ said to so like Nixon, is the first to actually challenge many Nixon initiatives (affirm action, e.g.).

@PincherMartin8 You are a political scientist par excel-lance. Excuse me, now.

@realmattcloud For the same reason conservatives hated Clinton in the 1990s, despite the fact he governed more conservatively than any Democratic president could possibly have done. Partisanship trumped ideology. It often does.