The modern GOP's Nixonian personality

In today's Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein provide a five-page history of the many crimes and corruptions of Richard Nixon and his aborted presidency. After reading it, my eyes wandered to the first comment, which unwittingly but nevertheless perfectly, in my view, reflected the celebrated reporters' key psychological insight into our 37th president.

First, the comment:

SO what ??? THis is ancient history. Nixon was a bum, that's true, but so was President Johnson, and FDR was FAR worse than both of them combined.

Liberals should love Nixon. Although he was a Republican (a RHINO!), he embraced all the ideas that liberals love, wage and price controls, detante with Communist china. Hell, it's because of Nixon that we have the EPA as it was formed during his administration, for that alone he shoud have rotted in a prison cell. No conservative today would have anything to do with a guy those political beliefs !!!!!

On the story's final page, just above that irrational retching and orthographic failing, Woodward and Bernstein had provided the aforementioned insight:

Nixon had lost his moral authority.... [H]e is heard talking [on the secret WH tapes] almost endlessly about what would be good for him, his place in history and, above all, his grudges, animosities and schemes for revenge. The dog that never seems to bark is any discussion of what is good and necessary for the well-being of the nation.

Hence the straight Republican political line from point A to point B throughout the last 40 years, even though the philosophical line meandered dramatically. From the party's base to its congressional delegation to its presidential nominee to its media allies, there has at last settled an insular sickness of almost indescribable self-absorption--one fixated on grudges, animosities and revenge, with nary a thought or discussion of what's good for the country.

Just crush the collective enemy--liberals, progressives and Democrats whose philosophical fundamentals remain rooted in those of Franklin Roosevelt, that "bum" who, as the right knows, "was FAR worse" than Nixon. If America's collapse happens to prove an outcome of the right's scheming revenge, well, so be it; indeed, perhaps so much the better, since this America, in the right's hateful opinion, isn't worth saving.

Comments

[Susan Zoon]

Political discourse online in the "threads" has become the equivalent of trash talking at a football game. The people have chosen teams. Hence: "My team sucks, but your team sucks more! The heroes of your team are crap and mine are demi-gods."

Argument of fact has nothing to do with anything. Self identification with the team trumps fact. This is why Bipartisanship is such a joke. It requires a level of respect for the ideas of the other team that simply no longer exists.

[Robert Lipscomb]

Your final comment is the one that is most profoundly confusing for me. It is an article of faith, the conventional wisdom, that Republicans are much more patriotic than Democrats. Yet, they hate government and the taxes to support it, and they dispise many or most of the people who comprise America. Many on the left squirm when they watch clips of Jeremiah Wright preaching, "God damn America!", but I grew up istening to those same sentiments preached every Sundy by a white, southern, protestant preacher - only more so.

I love America - not in spite of our many nutcases but because of our nut cases. Republicans do not. So, how are they more patriotic than me?

[Janicket]

They're more patriotic, Robert, because THEY SAY SO -- loudly, incessantly, and without one iota of doubt, no matter the context or countervailing evidence. And if anyone tries to counter them with reason or facts, they simply scream louder.

[AnneJ]

I've been saying this for weeks now. Pretty much every victory republicans have won for the past forty years have been because of the Nixon state of mind. I strongly recommend reading Rick Perstein's Nixonland, a book about America and the central figure responsible for where we are today as a nation. It really did all start with him.