Louis Proyect wrote
(Bartlett gives Obama too much credit. Nixon was far to the left of Obama.)
Obama Is a Republican
He's the heir to Richard Nixon, not Saul Alinsky.
By BRUCE BARTLETT . October 21, 2014
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/obama-is-a-republican/
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I wondered about that often-quoted statement and looked up Nixon's
record. Among other things, Nixon founded the Environmental Protection
Agency, and later oversaw passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water
Act, and the Mammal Marine Protection Act; created the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); expanded the Food Stamp program;
initiated Supplemental Security Income (SSI) providing a guaranteed
income for the elderly and disabled; was a proponent of the 26th
Amendment, extending the right to vote to 18-20 year olds, lowering the
voter age from 21; signed Title IX in 1972, preventing gender bias at
colleges and universities receiving federal aid, opening the door for
women in collegiate sports.
This does not include the lengthy list of right wing actions in his
administration, such as opposition to abortion, support for school
prayer,amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, up for renewal in
1970, tilted toward the segregationist South, the Omnibus Crime Control
and Safe Streets Act (1968), the Organized Crime Control Act, the
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act (1970), and the
District of Columbia Criminal Procedures Act: provisions emphasizing
wiretapping, preventive detention, and other measures that aroused the
opposition of civil libertarians.
Like Obama and you name it, Nixon was politically pragmatic, tacking
left or right to enhance his own reelection prospects, to maintain a
Republican Congress and to appease Wall Street (use of wage and price
controls to combat inflation, abandonment of what was left of the gold
standard, allowing future Federal Reserve Boards to print money without
effective restraint, no longer with gold or silver backing), the farm
lobby (Senator Dole and food stamps), the pharmaceutical and medical
lobbies (his efforts to implement Edgar Kaiser's private enterprise
solution to health care), etc.
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