Anything Worthwhile To Learn From Nixon And Midterm Elections? What About TV Cooking Shows?

Pamela Geller, the new Phyllis Schlafly

"The new approach in violence requires men in Congress who will work for and fight for laws that will put the terrorists where they belong-- not roaming around civil society, but behind bars."

Sound familiar? It's not Bush or Boehner or Miss McConnell. That was Richard Nixon in the run-up to the 1970 midterm congressional elections. He had Agnew crisscrossing the country like a chicken without a head attacking liberal Republicans and all Democrats. Nixon hated all his "enemies" equally, but sometimes it seemed like his Republican enemies got even more attention than Democrats. 

Notice how I referred to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell as "Miss McConnell"? That's because he's a homophobic closet queen who was tossed out of the Army for fondling a private's privates. Republican Sen. Charles Goodell wasn't a closet case, wasn't homophobic, wasn't tossed out of the Army and wasn't gay at all. But Spiro Agnew equated this New York Republican senator to then-infamous male-to-female transgender former soldier Christine Jorgensen by calling him "the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party," implying Goodell had surrendered his manhood (by not backing Nixon's aggression and war crimes against Cambodia).

Nixon was certain the Republicans would rock the midterms. He and Agnew weren't just campaigning against liberal Republicans, they were on a jihad against Democrats, and were horrified when their efforts largely backfired. They did manage to unseat Goodell and replace him with one-term extremist James Buckley (who ran on the Conservative Party line, a kind of teabagger ahead of his time; Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan routed him in the next election). But Ralph Smith, the far right Illinois Republican they were so determined to keep in office, lost to Adlai Stevenson III and the far right Republican tap dancer in California, Georgia Murphy, was slaughtered by John Tunney. Nixon's handpicked wingnut candidates in Florida and New Jersey didn't even come close, and George Bush I lost his second consecutive Senate race in Texas.

Democrats targeted by Nixon for smears and dirty tricks won reelection in almost every state where Agnew set foot, from Wisconsin-- where the Nixon candidate only managed 28% against William Proxmire-- to Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota and Utah. Mitt Romney's mother Lenore was Nixon's big hope in Michigan, but the voters there were smart enough to send her away with less than a third of the vote and reelect Phil Hart. Hubert Humphrey won back his Senate seat in Minnesota, and so did Ted Kennedy (MA), Edmund Muskie (ME), Mike Mansfield (MT), Joseph Montoya (NM) and Gale McGee (WY), all equated with terrorists by Nixon hatchetmen.

The House, which Nixon never understood and never cared about anyway, went even worse for the GOP. They showed a net loss of a dozen seats, and many of the kooks Agnew backed as challengers to Democratic incumbents-- like John Bircher Phyllis Schlafly-- were badly defeated.

Tonight Digby and I are going to be talking politics on a cooking show, a cooking show that will demonstrate how to prepare a vegan Thanksgiving dinner, a cooking show that will presumably be broadcast after the November elections. The cook will be cooking, and we'll be babbling about the ingredients and the aromas... and electoral politics. I guess I'd be safe in saying something like "Pamela Geller, currently the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has just offended over a billion Muslims with her latest psychotic outburst." But what we don't know yet is if the rejiggering of the campaign finance system by the conservatives on the Supreme Court will have allowed corporate boards to buy congressional power back.

What we don't know yet is whether or not Americans will fall for Boehner's question, "Where are the jobs?" without realizing the trade, tax, economic and fiscal policies pushed by conservatives like himself are responsible for the collapse of the American middle class and the hollowing out of our entire economy. Obstructing Obama every step of the way as he attempted-- even if without the requisite sense of steely, Rooseveltian determination-- only added to the disaster.

Alas, Digby and I won't be joined by our old pal Rick Perlstein, to whose book, Nixonland, I turned for some answers this morning. How did Democrats turn the Nixon-Agnew onslaught around? Reagan and the two Bushes hadn't yet stacked the Supreme Court with a gaggle of dangerous corporate hacks like Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Thomas, and the Fairness Doctrine was still in place. When Nixon bought airtime for a 30-minute speech on all the networks the night before election, the FEC made him split the time with the Democrats (who had to pay their share). Nixon's speech was chopped down from 30 minutes to 15 and made no sense; it looked and sounded horrible. The Democrats recruited a relaxed and sane-sounding Sen. Edmund Muskie (ME) to make their case. It cost the GOP their victory.

Calmly, he said the charge Democrats appeased thugs as "a lie, and the American people know it is a lie-- a lie about the party "which led us out of depression and victory over international barbarism; the party of John Kennedy, who was slain in the service of the country he inspired; the party of Lyndon Johnson, who withstood the fury of countless demonstrations in order to pursue a course he believed in; the party of Robert Kennedy, murdered on the eve of his greatest triumph. How dare they tell us that this party is less devoted or less courageous in maintaining American principles and values than they are themselves?"

His voice rose slightly; some passion was called for.

Occasionally the camera closed in on his chiseled face. The word Lincolnesque appeared in the press reports. His tone turned rueful: "This attack is not simply the overzealousness of a few local leaders. It has been led, inspired, and guided from the highest offices in the land...

"Let me try to bring some clarity to this deliberate confusion," he said. Democrats wanted security against lawlessness, too, but Democrats also thought you deserved economic security. The Republicans? "They oppose your interests" and "really believe that if they can make you afraid enough or angry enough, you can be tricked into voting against yourself. It is all part of the same contempt, and tomorrow you can show them the mistake they have made." The debate wasn't between left or right, but between "the politics of fear and the politics of trust. One says: you are encircled by monstrous dangers. Give us power over your freedom so we may protect you. The other says: the world is a baffling and hazardous place, but it can be shaped to the will of men... In voting for the Democratic Party tomorrow, you cast your vote for trust, not just in leaders of policies, but trusting your fellow citizens, in the ancient tradition of this home for freedom and, most of all, for trust in yourself."

...The New York Times found a typical blue-collar swing voter to quote in Akron, Teamster Mike Mangione. He said the National Guardsmen were "one hundred percent right in Kent State." But his wife was taking a job for the first time because he had lost his overtime and they wanted to keep three kids in Catholic school. He was voting Democratic. "This summer only ten out of forty guys were working because of the slowdown in the construction industry."

Boehner and his cronies keep asking, "Where are the jobs?" Were the Democrats-- even beyond Clinton and Rahm Emanuel-- too complicit in sending them overseas to shove that question, the pivotal one, in my opinion, right up their asses?