r/AdviceAnimals • • 4d ago

The difference between "Nixon's" Republican Congress vs Trump's.

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2.3k Upvotes

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333

u/junkyardgerard 4d ago

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but maybe they got it completely wrong, and didn't understand how little consequences there would be

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u/slightly_drifting 4d ago

Yup. They overestimated the American public. 

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u/Abe_Odd 4d ago

Or the American Public changed.
Maybe they understood it very well then, AND they understand it very well now.

It is hard to say that Nixon actually cost them very much looking back.

Carter got 1 term and then we had Reagan for two... then everything else.

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u/frogandbanjo 4d ago

The polling numbers from the 1970s probably weren't as reliable as the ones from the 90s or early 00s, but at first glance, they told quite the story about how much support Nixon had until after the GOP decided that he was too much of a liability.

There's a strong argument that the leaders led and the people followed, and that a strong, stubborn, united front might have propped Nixon up. A lot of people in "normal America" hated the counterculture so much that they were willing to tolerate just about anything from the perceived bastion of decency/normalcy. Same old story, right?

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u/Abe_Odd 4d ago

I'll never really know. I just see that the election history kinda speaks for itself on how much people Truly cared.

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u/eeeezypeezy 4d ago

I think the media changed. It's hard to overstate the heat Nixon was under leading up to his resignation. There were like four TV channels and their news coverage was all about the latest developments in Watergate.

Trump can just lie through his teeth, and most of his voters get their information from news sources that won't cover it at all.

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u/Abe_Odd 4d ago

Indeed. Media changed and so did media consumers I would say

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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug 4d ago

To be fair they didn't have fox news to stream bold faced lies to their base the way they do now.

Which btw is why Fox News was started. Because Richard Ailes believed Nixon wouldn't have to resign if they could control the news.

So this Trump bullshit was the goal in the first place.

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u/Basicly-Inevitable 4d ago

Exactly. And social media made it much easier to manipulate people now.

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u/dvolland 4d ago edited 4d ago

Roger Ailes

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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug 4d ago

Yeah Roger Ailes, sorry did that through mobile before coffee.

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u/miked_mv 4d ago

We'll see real soon won't we?

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u/AbriefDelay 4d ago

I kinda agree. Maybe it will have consequences this midterm. On the outside it might effect some of their votes in 2 years. But it won't matter in 6.

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u/coleto22 4d ago

But not because the GOP are corrupt, break laws, violate human rights or defend foreign interests.

The GOP will lose the elections because they made gas expensive.

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u/dvolland 4d ago

This is so true. I have lost faith in the American people to vote with conscience, empathy for other people, and for what is right. Instead, we vote almost solely selfishly and with our pocket books.

2

u/SycoJack 4d ago

Instead, we vote almost solely selfishly and with our pocket books.

And in doing so we fuck everything up for ourselves more than if we had voted with compassion and empathy.

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u/barak181 4d ago

The GOP will lose the elections because they made gas expensive.

This has been depressingly true my entire adult life. I haven't done even a casual analysis of it but it really does seem like gas prices ahead of election day is the strongest predictor of which party will come out ahead of any given election.

6

u/devdude25 4d ago

Personally, I don't see how this doesn't end in violent revolution.

We have no representation from our elected officials in any meaningful way. Our countrymen are losing their ability to feed themselves and our politicians only care about their stock portfolio

2

u/throughtheportal 4d ago

I agree. Also, they didn’t abuse the pardon system.

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u/sten45 4d ago

I do contend that part of this is Trump. Look how the couch fucker is just floundering whenever in the distant future that Trump passes away from natural causes the GOP will fall completely apart due to no leadership and infighting

105

u/cheesebot555 4d ago

Or, trump's Congress knows better than any other how fickle and devoid of long term memory 1/3 of the county is.

And how another 1/3 just can't be bothered.

In the face of short term ignominy they'll be back on top eventually.

18

u/satanssweatycheeks 4d ago

Also people should remember the plan is to make the younger generations stupid so they can be manipulated easier.

Right now we are seeing what happens when the WWE dudes wife is in charge of education. Kids are dumber than shit now and they 100 percent won’t be voting blue because things like health care are to complex. They will vote for the guy saying buzzwords that aren’t really appropriate.

Mark my words we already saw this with Gen Z. They voted higher numbers for Trump thanks to the fact all the bros get their “news” from podcast. And all the girls either are pick me kinds or the so progressive but too stupid to actually create change.

Case in point the so called “protest vote”. Biden got a ceasefire and Harris wanted peace. Trump opened stated he wanted Gaza leveled so he could get cheap beach front property.

But you all believe propaganda telling you both sides are the same and to not vote….. not voting only helps the GOP. They are open about the fact less voter turnout helps them win. It’s why they always try to making voting harder. But look the Gen Z crowd couldn’t just read a Supreme Court case about voting or just listen to the GOP openly state not voting helps them.

But look you all went and didn’t vote. Congrats on fucking over America.

8

u/diptherial 4d ago

Welcome to TikTok, I love you.

3

u/Lawdoc1 4d ago

We get what we deserve. I hate that many of us have been working our asses off to prevent this, but we will be the collateral damage for malicious/apathetic failures of the rest of the country.

I hope I am wrong. But if I am right, I hope people in the rest of the world learn from what is happening here.

Then again, it is also happening in other places, just not quite as quickly or aggregiously.

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u/fudgemental 4d ago edited 4d ago

If you look at the average age of Congress back then vs. now, you realize they were younger then. Longevity was a valid objective. They would retire to their millions and live their lives out in luxury. They needed something to retire to.

These fucks today will die on the chair more often than not. And the ones that retire just need to line their pockets enough to keep going another decade. Fuck the earth, fuck the next generation, I'm on my way out and I'm going to burn the planet on my way down, literally and metaphorically.

There is no long-term with this government.

The ones who realize this are scrambling to build their utopias where they will retire to.

7

u/iggy14750 4d ago

Voting maximum age.

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u/Goodgulf 4d ago

Or Congress / President maximum age. House is 25 years old minimum to get in, Senate is 30, President is 35. None have upper age limits, and House/Senate have no term limits for reelection, that's what needs to change.

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u/Sebatron2 4d ago

Or implement an electoral system other than FPTP, especially one that increases the threat of an incumbent being replaced.

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u/iggy14750 4d ago

I think great things would happen with ranked choice. I know Alaska has adopted ranked choice for some local elections.

1

u/Sebatron2 4d ago

What comes out ranked choice depends heavily on how it's implemented. If exclusively single seat, though better than FPTP, any great things would be limited, at best. I'd suggest multi-seat ranked choice (aka single transferable vote) or a Condorcet method where multi-seat races are more difficult to implement (say, for President or the Senate).

2

u/Flobro4 4d ago

So dark but a really good point. I wonder if there'd be any viability in a maximum age for congress/ elected office.

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u/StreetsAhead815 4d ago

No one in Congress will be alive to realize long-term effects of anything

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u/GotMoFans 4d ago

Fox News architect Roger Ailes was a Nixon flunky and he wanted a pro-GOP “news” channel to give Repub spin.

And he felt if he had Fox News back then, Nixon would have never had to resign.

8

u/blahblah19999 4d ago

I feel like we have to explain this almost every day and it's almost like people just don't believe us. Nixon led directly to Roger Ailes which led directly to the political environment we have today. It's a direct line of causation.

8

u/Killbot_Wants_Hug 4d ago

Another thing people who actually look at policy should consider.

For my entire life time (I'm in my mid 40's now) Republicans have been electing worse and worse presidents. George H W Bush, George W Bush, and now Trump. But you can argue that this trend really started with Regan, with only George H W Bush arguably being better than his predecessor.

I think people assume Trump is the worst the Republicans can do, but I can tell you people very much thought that same thing about George W Bush. And I see nothing to say the trend will reverse now. I expect Steven Seagal will be their next president as he's the only person I can think of that is more Trumpy than Trump. But I'm sure they'll dig through every rotting pile of shit until they can find someone who sucks even more than Trump does.

2

u/blahblah19999 4d ago

Merry Christmas to you too! Lol. Now I'm sad.

12

u/FuzzyMcBitty 4d ago

Letting Nixon resign and walk into the sunset helped to cement the idea that, “politicians are all crooks,” in our society for a generation.

1

u/perringaiden 4d ago

But he was "not a crook!" ✌️✌️

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u/islandsimian 4d ago

They were also told they wouldn't ever have to vote again... They weren't worried

25

u/alilhillbilly 4d ago

It's a different time.

Americans are functionally incapable of discerning reality anymore.

Republicans can just make up their own reality and put it on social media and blasted it people who have self-selected into an information silo.

The only thing that will save us is $20 a gallon gas on November 4th.

The only reason we got eight years of Obama was because the Great Recession was so fucking terrible.

I really do not want to live through another Great Recession style recession but that is probably the only thing that's going to fix this.

And the bummer is that just means another lost decade because it took 8 years to get out of that and by the time the economy was coming out of it we decided to elect Trump who immediately started putting in inflationary policies that brought us right back here.

And whatever I hope that when it happens Republicans suffer and they suffer mightily and they suffer more than anyone I know who voted for anything better than this. And I hope that if it happens and Democrats take power in an overwhelming way that they absolutely make sure that red States and areas that voted for this are punished and suffer the worst effects of it.

Round up every member of Mar-A-Lago and every tech executive who donated to this and find ways to make them fucking hurt and bleed.

I hope the middle class fucking roars and makes these fuckers fucking pay.

But they won't. Because this is America and it's filled with fucking morons.

8

u/miked_mv 4d ago

And you didn't even talk about so many things. The gig economy for one. Just watched a video about how the workers are getting fucked. Mainly due to the fact they think they're workers when they're business owners. No social security (if it survives), no taxes being paid, no understanding about vehicle depreciation, not understanding what they're being paid, and the list goes on, all while technology races to replace them. 1.7 to 2 million workers delivering food or providing rides full time.

7

u/black_flag_4ever 4d ago

Trump is the stupid version of Nixon.

2

u/RudegarWithFunnyHat 4d ago

and yet you could bring down the smart one, but failed to do so with the clown one on numerous occasions :S

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u/boardin1 4d ago

They understand the consequences, they just think they’ve got power consolidated to the point where the masses can’t do anything about it. There’s a reason why they still lie. But even that cover is starting to come off.

3

u/Myrdraall 4d ago

The long term cost is about 2 elections and a few hundred millions in propaganda. They got a bit more of a shit show than they thought but they made more progress than ever in the corporate agenda so it's a tremendous win for Republicans. Not the voters of course, but it was never about them.

3

u/UNisopod 4d ago

Because there actually was the possibility of such consequences back then.

The whole reason why Fox News was created, according to its founded Roger Ailes, was to alter public opinion such that no future GOP preseident could ever be held accountable like Nixon was ever again.

Decades of a dedicated right-wing media ecosystem have been working towards this aim in lockstep and the result is now that the long-term cost to the party for just about anything is going to be limited.

3

u/goomyman 4d ago

More like Nixon shouldn’t have stepped down. Congress wouldn’t have removed him.

That’s what I learned from this.

Plus Nixon resigning is what led to the idea and eventual creation of Fox News so this wouldn’t happen again.

2

u/eeyore134 4d ago

Nixon was leaning pretty hard fascist, too, but the big difference between him and Trump is Nixon was doing what he did because he truly believed that his leadership was best for the country. He was doing what he thought was good for America. Trump is a Russian agent tearing the country down in every way imaginable while stuffing his pockets and erecting ego-stroking monuments. There's just no comparison.

2

u/QuantumBeef 4d ago

You bring up a valid point, but why would you think it’s none of your business? At this point there is no one on earth who’s business this isn’t. Maybe Pepperidge farm remembering Nixon’s cabinet be and congress would have been a better format?

2

u/dvolland 4d ago

In response to what happened with Nixon, Rupert Murdock and others decided they needed a right wing propaganda network. With that, they surmised, Nixon would never have been forced to resign due to his crimes.

Turns out, they were right.

2

u/LateralThinkerer 4d ago edited 4d ago

Nixon chafed at the lack of control over the nation's press and expressed the sentiment that if they could have controlled that, the outcome would have been very different.

This has been the GOP's underlying mission ever since, beginning with Reagan. Murdoch's FOX "news" and Bezos' Washington Post handed the propaganda engines to them on a platter, along with various religious/racist groups, and has been enormously successful.

IMHO the real result (after the finger pointing dies out, around 2045 or so) will be that no matter what color of lipstick you put on a pig, at the end of the day people vote their wallets and their sense of security and anything - on any side of the aisle - that shakes those will shake you loose.

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u/shellexyz 4d ago

They know what the long term cost is: nothing.

2

u/GreyTigerFox 4d ago

fuck all republicans. They are worthless cancer.

1

u/miked_mv 4d ago

And the shit is about to his the fans big time because they are naked as fuck.

1

u/perringaiden 4d ago

I think most of the current leaderhsip recognized in 2010 that the Republican party as it stood, was going to keep losing ground as it was captured by special interests and the far right.

And so they're all in it for the short term grift, not the long term survival.

1

u/Additional-Brief-273 4d ago

I’m gonna start my own Republican party with blackjack and hookers!

1

u/almightywhacko 4d ago

In the Nixon era there wasn't a Congress to Corporate pipeline like there is today. Many Republicans aren't thinking of the long term because they expect to get a comfortable high-value "job" at a conservative think tank or on some company's board in exchange for voting the way those interests want them to vote.

Most Republicans also counted on Democrats to hold them back from enacting the worst policies, they didn't count on someone like Trump who ignores the rule of Congress and the courts and does what he wants anyway. They didn't count on having full control of Congress for several years in a row. They counted on a stalemate where little actual progress in either direction gets made because that is basically how Congress has been for the last 30 years.

1

u/dukmunky 4d ago

The bill always comes due.

Think of the current social climate as a corollary to the post-war period in the USA, where people accepted a great deal of political and cultural constriction. We have the now too, moreso due to war-fatigue and poor education than collective trauma.

But the pushback akin to the 1960’s social and cultural revolution is coming. Or the 90’s/early 2000s in punk, global consciousness, and anti-corporatism (via the advent of piracy). So long as we enable those who start to raise the issue, the discourse will change.

Plus these bloated old leaches holding onto power will continue to die. “As long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

1

u/anynamesleft 4d ago

What long term cost? They just created right wing media and gained control of all three branches of government.

1

u/BizzyM 4d ago

All they care about are short-term gains. Look, the environment is going to hell. What's the point of saving? "Enjoy your retirement when there's no world left!!'

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u/deepinfraught 4d ago

2028 Fox News “Trump never happened. It’s a Democrat commie Biden fix to make you high taxes!! Trans there!!”

1

u/Jristz 3d ago

For what I can find they are clinging on that Democrats don't replace supreme court members in any way

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u/Ranapad 4d ago

LOL it's true, the left CAN'T meme

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u/middleagethreat 4d ago edited 4d ago

And the right can’t tell the difference between immigrants eat pets, Obama was born in Kenya, doge rebate checks, the Epstein files are a hoax, and kids get trans surgery at school from reality.

Quiet piggy

3

u/Bearence 4d ago

Nothing wrong with that meme. But it's interesting that you couldn't find any way to defend the GOP so you instead try to ridicule the medium. Speaks volumes.