We saw G. H. W. Bush have problems when he tried to moderate to gain in the middle, and lost support from the Robertson-Falwell cadre. Other more moderate candidates lost primaries and elections because of the same tactic.

Sonny seems determined not to lose that part of his constituency. Instead, his tacticians appear to be trying to make everyone else believe that if you don't agree with the Radical Religious Right, there must be something wrong with you. It was a shock to me, initially, to see that there were so many media mooks who would jump right onto that campaign. However, even though some people have been willing, seemingly, to forsake the middle for the far right, I think there are far more who no longer speak up for fear of reprisals, but who will continue to speak with their votes. And many of those who have been swayed will lose their ability to stomach the constant abuses of our society perpetrated by the far Right.

The politics of division are a time-honored tradition, but one which almost guarantees us second-class leadership. Agnew and Atwater were certainly two major players in the beginnings of our current faux class warfare. They taught well, as our current political climate shows. But I think most of their support comes from the newer generations.

Within five years of Nixon's resignation, probably half the people who supported him to the end had admitted that it was best the he resign, and said he had betrayed the trust of his position. In fact, some of those people became his bitterest critics. Once their denial or partisan conditioning broke down, or they saw that no one showed up to refute the story as it played out (both shoes had already fallen), they were appalled and completely disgusted.

Some of Nixon's apologists today are fans of his victories in foreign policy. Those who wish to mine the riches of China (despite the effects on the American economy) realize it was he who got the ball rolling for them. Among his political apologists, there are some old-line conservative Republicans who have forgotten the rotten taste in their mouths. And there are a few of his toadies--notable among them is Nixon's own Roy Cohn, Ben Stein. But many of those who now claim the "framed by the Democrats" conspiracy are not from the ranks of Nixon's early supporters. Instead, they're the new idealogues who know they need to rehabilitate Nixon, Agnew, Reagan, et.al., to give themselves a glorious history. It's difficult to base an ideology on a history of moral bankruptcy.