George Tyler on Richard Nixon

“Commentators portray Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a more organized and calculating Donald Trump. In reality, DeSantis most resembles Richard Nixon -- disciplined, stiff and intense. Both lack Trump's charisma and ease before voters. Also unlike Trump -- but very much like Nixon -- DeSantis effectively deploys powers of the state for political gain. And DeSantis also mimics Nixon's cruelty, his willingness to place constituents in harm's way in the pursuit of political gain.”

“The good news for DeSantis is that Nixon won election as president despite also having a combative and unlikable personality. The bad news for him is that voters in 1968 were unaware of Nixon's cruel streak. Fearful that his opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, would gain from peace in Vietnam, Nixon secretly derailed peace talks then underway in Paris. His cynical act prolonged the war by five years, ruthlessly adding more than 20,000 additional American deaths, plus hundreds of thousands of additional Vietnamese deaths. In contrast to Nixon, DeSantis' cruel streak is already evident to voters. It includes demonizing LGBTQ youths. He is mimicking Russia's Putin, Hungary's Viktor Orban and others throughout history who similarly sought political advantage attacking the vulnerable -- the Irish, Rohingyas, Jews, African Americans, Uyghurs and now the LGBTQ community.”

“Principled Republicans were pivotal in rejecting the amorality of Richard Nixon, ejecting him from the White House in 1974. In contrast, only a handful of today's House or Senate Republicans supported Trump's impeachment for the attempted decapitation of American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. That shift signals that Nixon's dark amorality now permeates the party, a mania enabled by conservative billionaires and Rupert Murdock's laudatory Fox News and Wall Street Journal. Like Richard Nixon, today's Republican leaders refuse to draw red lines, cruelly accepting avoidable deaths among the party faithful as merely a price to be paid for political gain. Thousands of party leaders are mimicking the cruelty and pathologies of Nixon in seeking political advantage -- but on a far larger scale that dwarfs his Vietnam brutality. DeSantis certainly reflects this generalized devolution. But history suggests that DeSantis may well fade like Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and others, his front-runner status only temporary. The real challenge for America is how to purge the Republican Party of Richard Nixon.”