On Oct 2, 2009, at 8:24 PM, SA wrote:
> In August 1971, the NR sponsored a declaration of "Suspension of
> Support" for Nixon signed by Buckley and 10 other luminaries of the
> right. (The trip to China, wage and price controls, etc.) They ended
> up endorsing Nixon in 1972 based on the argument that while Nixon
> was horrible, a state of emergency existed due to the threat of
> McGovern. William Rusher, the publisher, wrote a dissenting
> editorial saying Nixon should not be endorsed; under his tenure the
> conservative movement has "all but vanished" (or words to that
> effect). I think the dissenting edit actually ran in the mag, though
> I'm not sure.
These were my days on the right. We thought Nixon was an abomination - Garry Wills, a NR apostate, had just published a book arguing that he was the last liberal. My first presidential votes were cast against Nixon for precisely the reasons that SA mentions - for Ashbrook in the primary and Schmitz in the general. Electoral strategy was a matter of some dispute on the right, just like the left debates over whether to vote for Gore or Nader, but there was no dissent over the fact that Nixon was not a true conservative. Cf. the mad delusions, which still persist to some degree, about Obama.
Doug