Nixon and Republicans had made arrangements that caused the South Vietnamese government to stall the peace talks.

At the time, the FBI had SIGINT/intercepts of Anna Chennault scuttling the efforts of LBJ to end the war but couldn't tie the intervention to Nixon, but time -- as it almost always does -- revealed the extent of Nixon's involvement being "all in" and pulling the strings.

Nixon's "getting away with it" at the time did nothing to curtail his illegal intervention into American democracy, which continued unabated and culminated with the Watergate affair... and the rest is history.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461

Nixon only “got us out of Vietnam” because it was Nixon’s campaign that kept the war from ending until he could take the credit for ending it! Republicans love keeping a crisis alive until THEY can get the spotlight on them for putting an end to it! (See also: Iran Hostage crisis)

Great idea for having these conversations with the family over Thanksgivings. Will let you know the results if we make it back alive!

R

[7] nypoet22

At least Kennedy prevented the Cuban missile crisis from turning into a general nuclear war.

I seriously doubt the same could have been said if Richard Nixon had been president instead, since the head of the Strategic Air Command at the time, Curtis LeMay, kept forcefully advocating for the bombing and invasion of Cuba, against both president Kennedy's and Defense Secretary McNamara's wishes.

Unknown to the US, the Soviet field commanders in Cuba had been given authority to launch nuclear weapons under their control. They had at least 20 nuclear warheads for medium-range R-12 Dvina (NATO Code SS-4 Sandal) ballistic missiles capable of reaching US cities (including Washington DC), each carrying a one megaton warhead (equivalent to 50 Hiroshima bombs), and nine tactical nuclear missiles.

A Soviet submarine flotilla in the area commanded by Kapitan (later Vice Admiral) Vasili Arkhipov had nuclear torpedoes. Because a US Navy surface flotilla was harassing the Soviet submarines with small depth charges, both the flagship's captain and its Zampolit (political officer), believing that war had started, voted to fire a nuclear torpedo at the flotilla. But Captain Arkhipov, a veteran of the K-19 disaster, voted to wait and see, thus averting World War III. (It required a yes vote of all three, just one man of the three voting no averted war.)

I don't even see that "arc" - Goldwater was a classic capitalist/conservative, Trump is an idiotic self-pomoter/narcissistic/moron/failed reality TV host. The only thing they have in common is the Rep. lable.

I lost all respect for the intelligence of the American electorate when they rejected Goldwater in '64 because the Democratics told them he was a warmonger, which resulted in LBJ and, you guessed it, the Vietnam war.

"No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
~H.L. Mencken

Michale -

Where do you want the party to go? Where do you think it'll end up?

-CW

PS. I wrote that paragraph about Trump making liberals' heads explode just for you!

:-)