Nixon Tapes Show President Railing About Blacks And Jews

The New York Times:

YORBA LINDA, Calif. -- Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary, recorded in the Oval Office 16 months before he resigned as president.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[The Albany Kid]

01:19 AM on 12/13/2010

The NYT article didn't seem very clear with regard to Nixon's feelings concerning Blacks. Was he talking Black Africans, Black Americans, or both?

[raptor]

05:39 PM on 12/12/2010

When I was in high school, I had a personal visit to VP Nixon. I took an instant dislike to him as an aluminum-siding salesman, The trip was arranged by a friend of my parents. He was a significant contributor to the Republicans in Southern California...and a Jew.

[northstar11]

09:45 AM on 12/12/2010

speaking of names missing from those coming back from viet nam --------there are a couple i can list and many of their friends

[northstar11]

09:37 AM on 12/12/2010

Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans.......i guess jews and blacks are not americans ???....

[Olethea]

08:43 AM on 12/12/2010

And racism still alive and well in the Republican party- Orielly and McCain accusing the left of wanting to 'destroy the white christian male power structure' in the US. They're alread destroying themselves.

[Cacey]

06:58 AM on 12/12/2010

It is time that the American People realize that the Republican Party as it exists today has its foundation in Nixonian thought.  Nixon was the outsider, the poor outsider, always wanting to be inside.  Though a Californian, he was influenced strongly by his expereiences at a Southern univeristy law school and used that experience effectively to move the party away from one of Northeastern moderation to one of Southern extremism, from one of Western acceptance to one of regional exclusion.  In doing so, he switched the philosophy from an open tent to a more coheslive albeit smaller tent of adherants and a dogmatic code we see rampant today.  Calling the Republicans the party of Lincoln and Reagan is a smokescreen.  It is the Party of Nixon. 

[BlairCase]

09:46 AM on 12/12/2010

Your contention that Nixon could not have possibly picked up racist attitudes in his native state is amusing. In 1868, California refused to ratify the 14th amendment, which granted citizenship to all persons, regardless of race, residing in the United States and subject to U.S. jurisdiction. California opposed the amendment because it made Chinese citizens. Nixon was 46 when California finally got around to ratifying the amendment in 1959.

[ajerram]

10:53 AM on 12/12/2010

I would disagree that Nixon's success actually depended on creating a more open tent for the Republicans which was actually a minority party at the time by bring in new components to his coalition - most notably southern Democrats.

[Mencken Today]

06:56 AM on 12/12/2010

Note to Chris Matthews; Chris the next time you seek some publicity be a little more objective.

Nixon not only bad-mouthed Jews (as you noted) but also Blacks, Irish and Italian-Americans (who you did not note!).

Try Chris, or rather give-up you current position, you are much better, a whole lot better, as a commentator than moderator...

[ForemostPanda]

04:14 AM on 12/12/2010

this is typical of the left. too bad they refuse to put jfk, lbj, and clinton on the record.

[deeoneakin]

05:39 AM on 12/12/2010

yeah blame it on the left, cos everyone knows it's a liberal conspiracy that Nixon bugged the White House and had his own telephone conversations recorded.

[Cacey]

06:10 AM on 12/12/2010

Typical of the left?  You forget that it was a group of leading Republican, real Republican,Senators who paid visit on Nixon to let him know that he had committed criminal acts and there was no hope for him to save his crooked presidency.  Next you'll tell  us it was the left that forced the resignation of Nixon's vice president.

[sydneymoon]

07:02 AM on 12/12/2010

"Nattering nabobs of negativism"
-Ted Agnew

=)

[CitizenIndie]

03:07 AM on 12/12/2010

40 years from now, people will be shocked at what the Republicans during the Bush era said in office.

then again...

[Betrayed]

03:34 AM on 12/12/2010

Please, do tell?

You obviously have the inside scoop, please share it with us all.

[chromodynamics]

04:16 AM on 12/12/2010

"Laura! Barney ran off with my colorin' book again!"

[ForemostPanda]

04:15 AM on 12/12/2010

I'm already disgusted by what obama, pelosi, and reid are saying right now.

[northstar11]

09:44 AM on 12/12/2010

for example?

[slippery pete]

10:27 AM on 12/12/2010

Your examples are very compelling. I am sure everyone is on your bandwagon now.

[SamEllison]

02:29 AM on 12/12/2010

Ah yes, Pat Buchanan's America.

[OkieMon]

10:40 AM on 12/12/2010

yeah and think of all those jews in florida who voted for him in 2000....

[LibertyRoy]

02:28 AM on 12/12/2010

I knew that Mel Gibson would have made a better Nixon than Anthony Hopkins!

[grasyknol]

01:37 AM on 12/12/2010

A great book to read is Nixonland, The Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein.

It really does shine the beginning stages of this scorched earth politics that has plagued this country over the last 30 years. Nixon set the stage. Subsequent Presidents capitalized on the social angst happening. While America fractured, the wealthy elites made their move to divide and conquer.

[ForemostPanda]

04:17 AM on 12/12/2010

even though jfk blackmailed people, assaissinated world leaders, got us mired in a foreign war, selpt with all these women, some with ties to gangsters, but nixon started it all? The radical left and their criminal actions are what fractured America.

[grasyknol]

09:25 AM on 12/12/2010

Perlstein covers the excesses of the left which led to a counter reaction. But Nixon did play the discontent "live a violin" as Jean below describes it well.

[slippery pete]

10:29 AM on 12/12/2010

You are soooo right! JFK was no Nixon. Except when half his brain was in Jackie's lap. But other than that he was no Nixon.

[jeanrenoir]

07:41 AM on 12/12/2010

Nixon was good at Fox-Rush politics from the start of his career. but even Nixon learned a thing or two from George Wallace's primary victory in Michigan in '68. From then on, Nixon, and the Republican Party generally, fully understood that all you have to do to con the moronic Michigan white auto workers--and white working-class Americans generally--into voting for Republicans, and thus AGAINST their own economic interests, was to play the workers' racism like a violin. We see how some things never change with these pathetic clods in how easy it was to convince them to vote Republican after painting Obama as a combination of The Joker, Hitler, and Stalin. These poor rubes will buy anything.

[TMcKeon]

08:59 AM on 12/12/2010

Divide and conquer. The Republican Way.

[kentj]

12:36 AM on 12/12/2010

Well, one thing is for sure....the sentiments of Nixon remains the same in the Republican Party.

The Party of hate speech, and racism.

[BIG JOHN]

11:41 PM on 12/11/2010

And of course no one knew he had these feelings before becoming p.o.t.u.s. Yea, right.

[rosal]

11:31 PM on 12/11/2010

Even for a Republican that was too much.

[realpolitik78]

02:20 AM on 12/12/2010

a republican backed by unions and "left" wing even by today's standards.

[Betrayed]

03:23 AM on 12/12/2010

Yep.

He also backed the "living wage"

That's as lib as lib gets.

[realpolitik78]

02:35 AM on 12/12/2010

i've seen comments on this site about "tea baggers" that were 100 times worse.

[Beowoof]

02:49 AM on 12/12/2010

About, or by?