Maggie's Farm

Nixon was solidly anti-communist. He came up from the non-elite, non-country-club Republicans. When he preached "law and order," the totality of those speeches revealed that he was talking most about cracking down on anti-American protestors, not criminals in general, not protestors in general. He communicated that he did love the US, however much he would compromise with other nations.

He therefore appealed to a great many Americans who believed they could trust him on the main things, even though they saw him as one more Washington politician - which he was. There are a half-dozen flavors of conservative, but Nixon didn't fit most of those well. He was not greatly fiscally conservative; he was not a deficit hawk; he was neither a social conservative nor a libertarian; he liked regulation.

He was a paranoid SOB and that was his downfall, as that was what was used against him. But you know what? He had a reason to be paranoid. The long campaign against him by communists influencing socialists influencing leftists influencing liberals began because he successfully depthcharged Alger Hiss. It eventually worked, even though he was dead right.