scholarly journals “I Was Going to Build a new Republican Party and a New Majority”: Richard Nixon as Party Leader, 1969–73

2005 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT MASON
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
White House ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Modern Era

Richard Nixon gained a poor reputation as President for his work as leader of the Republican Party. His attitude towards the party was seen as neglectful at best, destructive at worst. It was clear that Nixon revelled in the details of electoral politics as far as his own position was concerned, but it seemed equally clear that he had little concern for the political fortunes of his party at large. Among the most partisan of American politicians during his earlier career, Nixon seemed to shrug off this partisan past when he reached the White House in 1969. But this understanding of Nixon's relationship with the Republican Party is in some respects misleading. Although it is true that his record provides significant examples of presidential neglect of the party, it also contains equally significant examples of presidential concern about the party's future. Few American Presidents of the modern era paid much attention to their responsibility for party leadership, so the nature of Nixon's support for the Republicans distinguishes him as a party leader of notable strength rather than notable weakness.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence S. Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
White House ◽  
College Age ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Generation

Bursting into fame toward the end of the Great Depression, Harold Stassen—elected governor of Minnesota at age thirty-one in 1938--excited a new generation of Republicans who enthusiastically supported his run for the presidency. After failing to win the nomination in 1948—a goal he believed his early successes merited—he repeatedly chased the nomination over the next generation. He became a figure of mockery as a perennial also-ran on the margins of the history of the twentieth century. He sought the Republican nomination for president of the United States twelve times between 1944 and 1992. Given his youth and enthusiasm, it was not surprising that he attracted supporters who were college age and younger. He broke with Republican Party leadership to engage in grassroots campaigning, bringing a corps of youthful admirers into his fold. He was a vigorous and articulate spokesman for a new generation ready to take over a demoralized party in the wake of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election to an unprecedented third term in the White House.

Party Animals of the 2016 Presidential Primaries: Political Cartoon Representations of the Republican and Democratic Parties

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (6) ◽  
pp. 600-610
Author(s):  
Joan L. Conners
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Primaries ◽  
Animal Representations ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Political Success

This analysis of political cartoon coverage of the 2016 presidential primaries found considerable attention given to the political parties themselves, as well as issues, and controversies the parties were facing. In political cartoons, the Republican and Democratic parties were usually reflected in animal representations of the elephant and donkey. A qualitative textual analysis of cartoon images from U.S. newspapers found a number of themes emerged in 2016 with regard to the party animals: Both parties were portrayed expressing reluctance or hesitancy in their party’s nominee, the Republican Party in particular was represented as helpless to stop the political success that Donald Trump saw in the primaries, and the Democratic Party was portrayed as divided between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. These themes found in political cartoon images suggest how the two dominant political parties operate in electoral politics today.

The Politics of Party Renewal: The “Service Party” and the Origins of the Post-Goldwater Republican Right

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M. Conley
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Service ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Social Turmoil

The rise of the Republican Right in the 1960s reshaped not only the politics of the Republican Party, but ultimately that of the country as well. What had started as an improbable movement to draft Goldwater for president in 1964 emerged, amid the political and social turmoil of the decade, as the dominant force within the Republican Party. But what has not received as much attention is the significant role that the national Republican Party leadership and the emphasis it placed on party renewal, rather than reform, played in the Right's rapid post-Goldwater ascent. This article examines how the process of party renewal, specifically the emergence of a national “service party” structure, helped not only to unify the GOP after the 1964 Goldwater loss, but also led to the development of a more conservative Republican Party during the second half of the 1960s.

Richard Nixon and the Desegregation of Southern Schools

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Davies
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
White House ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Supreme Court

Scholars assessing Richard Nixon's contribution to the desegregation of Southern schools have often been unimpressed. His biographer Stephen Ambrose concedes that there was some White House contribution, but observes that “Nixon had to be hauled kicking and screaming into desegregation on a meaningful scale, and he did what he did not because it was right but because he had no choice.” The political scientist Michael Genovese concurs, telling us that Nixon sought to “withdraw the federal government from its efforts at desegregation.” A recent civil rights dictionary concludes that this was “the first successful presidential candidate to be opposed to civil rights enforcement,” adding that “many of his tactics thwarted the furthering of school desegregation.” The noted civil rights historian, William Chafe, meanwhile, contends that “Nixon repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to the politics of polarization”; “continued to embrace” southern evasions that “had been invalidated by the Supreme Court”; and used “the power of the presidency to delay, if not halt completely, federally imposed school desegregation.” And Kevin O'Reilly, in an overview of presidential leadership on civil rights, finds the 37th president to have been essentially indistinguishable from the race-baiting George Wallace. Nixon resented the Alabamian, he reveals, because “he wanted the gutter all to himself.” Considering a number of contenders, he concludes that “school desegregation emerged as the administration's most important and enduring (anti)civil rights crusade.”

The Loser

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
Aram Goudsouzian
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Grassroots Politics ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Urban Disorder ◽  
At Home

Chapter Two charts the political odyssey of Richard Nixon through the primary season in the spring of 1968. It traces how he consciously tacks between the moderate wing of the Republican Party and right-wing grassroots politics. After getting labelled a political “loser,” he crafts a comeback over the course of the mid-1960s, positioning himself as the inevitable nominee in 1968. His campaign thrives as it plays on voter anxieties about urban disorder at home, and the Vietnam War abroad.

Hard White

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Fording ◽  
Sanford F. Schram
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity Structure ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
White House ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
To Come

This book analyzes data from a variety of sources to understand the mainstreaming of racism today, putting this research in a historical context. With issues of globalization, immigration, and demographic diversification achieving greater public salience, racism is now more likely to manifest itself in the form of a generalized ethnocentrism that expresses “outgroup hostility” toward a diverse set of groups, including Latinos and Muslims as well as African Americans. Changes in both structure and agency have facilitated the mainstreaming of racism today. Changes in the “political opportunity structure,” as witnessed by the rise of the Tea Party Movement, enabled the mainstreaming of white extremists into the Republican Party and established the basis for an electoral politics focused on giving voice to white people more generally acting on their outgroup hostility. Changes in the political opportunity structure were matched by the appearance of a charismatic leader in the person of Donald Trump, who made great use of a transformed media landscape to stoke white people’s outgroup hostility. Trump won the presidency by strategically deploying his demagoguery to mobilize white nonvoters in swing states, with the end result greatly accelerating the mainstreaming of racism and placing it at the center of policymaking in the White House. Providing extensive empirical evidence, this book documents how the mainstreaming of racism today began before Trump started to run for the presidency but then increased under his leadership and that it is likely to be a troubling presence in U.S. politics for some time to come. The findings provided create the basis for suggestions on how to push racism back to the margins of American politics.

The AfD as a ‚Leaderless’ Right-Wing Populist Party. How the Leadership-Structure Dilemma Left an Imprint on the Party’s Leadership

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Gregor Zons ◽  
Anna Halstenbach
Keyword(s):  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Leadership Structure ◽  
Consolidation Phase ◽  
Leadership Turnover ◽  
Party Institutionalization

AbstractDespite its right-wing populist character, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) shows no signs of a strong party leadership. We ascribe this state of the party leadership to the AfD’s institutionalization as a new party and show how organizational features interact with the skill set and goals of the party leaders. At the party level, we, firstly, outline the organizational change at the top of the party and the party leader selection rules. Secondly, we depict leadership turnover and competitiveness. At the leader level, we investigate the failure of Bernd Lucke, the key founder and one of the initial party leaders, as a manifestation of the leadership-structure dilemma of new parties. Embedded in a leadership team and faced with a growing extra-parliamentary party structure, Lucke tried to secure his initial autonomy and position of power by an attempt to become the sole party leader. His subsequent exit from the AfD laid bare the fact that he was not able to manage the challenges of the organizational consolidation phase, in which a new party needs a coordinator and consensus-builder. The AfD itself has proven its organizational autonomy from its initial leaders and its distaste for a strong and centralized party leadership. The barriers for the latter remain in place while, at the same time, the party institutionalization is still on-going, especially regarding its place in the German party competition.

Before Reagan: The Development of Abortion’s Partisan Divide

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1047
Author(s):  
Neil A. O’Brian
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

What explains the alignment of antiabortion positions within the Republican party? I explore this development among voters, activists, and elites before 1980. By 1970, antiabortion attitudes among ordinary voters correlated with conservative views on a range of noneconomic issues including civil rights, Vietnam, feminism and, by 1972, with Republican presidential vote choice. These attitudes predated the parties taking divergent abortion positions. I argue that because racial conservatives and military hawks entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because proabortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that preexisting public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti (pro) abortion movement in a web of conservative (liberal) causes. A key finding is that the white evangelical laity’s support for conservative abortion policies preceded the political mobilization of evangelical leaders into the pro-life movement. I contend the pro-life movement’s alignment with conservatism and the Republican party was less contingent on elite bargaining, and more rooted in the mass public, than existing scholarship suggests.

The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 971-972
Author(s):  
Steve Patten
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
University Of British Columbia ◽  
Pierre Elliott Trudeau ◽  
Canadian Politics ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Electoral Behaviour ◽  
Party Dominance

The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics, Stephen Clarkson, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005, pp. xii, 335.Stephen Clarkson's The Big Red Machine offers an insightful chronicle of the Liberal Party of Canada's electoral behaviour over a period of thirty years. By bringing together revised versions of his previously published accounts of the Liberal Party's successes and failures in the nine general elections held between 1974 and 2004, Clarkson provides a unique opportunity for serious reflection on Liberal Party dominance of twentieth-century Canadian politics. Beyond that, however, his accessible and compelling presentation of the story of Liberal electoral politics offers a nostalgic review of the events and personalities that shaped the political journey from Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Paul Martin. In accomplishing this, Clarkson has produced a book that will be of as much interest to non-academic followers of Canadian politics as it is to serious students of partisan politics.

The Free Republican Party in the political cartoons of the 1930s

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 93-136
Author(s):  
Gökçen Başaran İnce
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Political Cartoons ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The Social ◽  
Kemal Ataturk

AbstractThe Free Republican Party (FRP; Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası), founded and dissolved in 1930, represented the second attempt to transition to a multi-party system in Turkey, following the formation of the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in 1924. In contrast to the oppositional establishment of the latter, the FRP seemed to be a state-originated project whose establishment was decided upon by the elites of the day, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Its representation in contemporary cartoons is deemed important today given the political cartoon’s ability to simplify complex political messages into understandable symbols and metaphors and to address or reach those who may not be literate. Taking into account the social structure of society during this period, this aspect of the reach of cartoons becomes particularly important. Political cartoons’ ability to both support the text in a newspaper and penetrate historical memory through stereotypes is also significant in terms of the representation of personalities and events. This article will attempt to analyze the formation of the FRP and the depiction of its elites through newspaper cartoons. Three prominent and pro-Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) newspapers of this period—namely Cumhuriyet, Milliyet, and Vakit—will provide the material for the content and thematic analysis of the study.

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