Rallying Around the President

On June 17, 1972, five employees from Nixon’s reelection committee were caught burglarizing the Democratic offices at the Watergate hotel. Within days of the arrests, Nixon and several high-ranking administration officials implemented a massive cover-up to hide their ties to the burglary and other illegal acts. In public, they denied involvement in the crime, played down its significance, and accused Democrats and the liberal press of playing partisan politics. Behind the scenes, they destroyed evidence, paid hush money to the burglars, and tried to obstruct the FBI investigation into the burglary. In 1972, the cover-up held together and Nixon was reelected in a landslide. But the cover-up quickly began to unravel the following year. In June 1973, a former White House aide implicated Nixon in it. This existential threat to Nixon’s presidency prompted Nixon loyalists to rally around the president. They created a national anti-impeachment organization, mounted a major public relations campaign in the press, and brought pressure on Goldwater and other congressional Republicans to stand by the president.

Nixon expected congressional Republicans, who were unaware of the White House’s involvement in the burglary or the president’s participation in the cover-up, to faithfully defend him, repeat his public messages on Watergate, and block or discredit any congressional inquiry into the matter. One of the people Nixon counted on was Barry Goldwater. After giving up his senate seat to run for president in 1964, Goldwater won another senate seat in 1968 and returned to Washington with the new presidential administration. Goldwater was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Nixon’s bid for the Republican nomination and viewed the new administration as the fulfillment of his own presidential aspirations. Although Goldwater and Nixon were not close, they had known each other for many years, and Goldwater expected to have privileged access to the president and influence with him. Recognizing Goldwater’s stature with conservatives, the White House lavished the senator with attention. But Nixon held few private meetings with Goldwater despite repeated assurances that they would meet regularly. Goldwater felt slighted, but he tended not to blame Nixon. He blamed those around the president, the so-called “Berlin Wall,” for isolating him.^{Footnote 7}

Goldwater’s rocky relationship with the Nixon White House mirrored that of other congressional Republicans. Many were unhappy with its dismissive attitude toward them and wanted to play a larger role in its legislative plans. More concerned with foreign policy and uncomfortable asking for votes from congressmen, Nixon left congressional relations largely up to his principal aides, who had little experience with or respect for Congress.^{Footnote 8} According to House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, Nixon’s aides believed Congress existed “only to follow their instructions and we had no right to behave as if we were a coequal branch of government.”^{Footnote 9} The White House’s relationship with congressional Republicans was further strained by the GOP’s minority position in both the House and the Senate throughout Nixon’s time in office and the sometimes stark divisions within the GOP caucus between liberals and conservatives. Struggling to build coalitions, the White House often reached out to conservative Democrats for votes and was quick to freeze out liberal Republicans who did not support its initiatives. However, the tension between the Nixon White House and congressional Republicans prior to Watergate should not be overstated. Goldwater and other GOP leaders in Congress were partisans who willingly supported most of the president’s major initiatives. As Dean Kotlowski has shown, Nixon and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott’s relationship was not as antagonistic as commonly portrayed. Their “few high profile disagreements,” concludes Kotlowski, “masked large areas of agreement.”^{Footnote 10}

Despite his frustrations with his limited access to Nixon, Goldwater campaigned wholeheartedly for the president’s reelection in 1972 and helped him defeat Democrat George McGovern. During the campaign, Goldwater was dismissive of the Watergate burglary. He had been the target of political dirty tricks in 1964 and viewed Watergate as a minor matter. He believed “the whole thing had to have been carried out by some crazy crew of political neophytes who had been swept up in the excitement of the campaign.”^{Footnote 11} Most of the nation agreed with him. Although McGovern sought to make it a major issue in the campaign, few national news organizations treated the “third-rate burglary” as an important matter and it failed to gain traction. In fact, polls showed more Americans believed McGovern had run a “dirty and unscrupulous campaign.”^{Footnote 12}

With his win over McGovern, Nixon appeared to have put Watergate behind him. But the scandal would not go away. In February 1973, the Senate created a special committee, the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (Watergate Committee), to investigate the burglary and other illegal activities during the 1972 campaign. The following month burglar James McCord reported at his sentencing hearing that he had been pressured to plead guilty and keep quiet at his trial and that there were higher-ups involved in the burglary who were not named. McCord then told the Watergate Committee that John Dean, the man Nixon had chosen to investigate the burglary, had helped to plan it.

These revelations caused the first cracks in Nixon’s Republican base and led Goldwater and other congressional Republicans to sound the alarm about Watergate.^{Footnote 13} Goldwater was one of the first to do so. As he traveled around the country speaking to Republican audiences in early 1973, he learned that wealthy donors were refusing to give money to the party until Watergate was cleared up.^{Footnote 14} In late March, he shared his concerns privately with the president. He “reluctantly” sent Nixon a letter urging him or his aides to make “public disclosures” about Watergate to “clear up what I know to be lies or misstatements.” Goldwater went on to say that he became troubled about Watergate after hearing from “prominent, long working Republicans in different parts of the country” about the damage Watergate was doing to the party.^{Footnote 15} Nixon, however, could not take Goldwater’s advice. He was fully implicated in the cover-up. Among other things, he had obstructed justice by trying to get the CIA to stop the FBI’s investigation into the burglary and by authorizing the payment of hush money to the burglars.

When his letter failed to elicit a response from the president, Goldwater went public with his concerns.^{Footnote 16} In early April, he gave an on-camera interview to the Christian Science Monitor, in which he said that Watergate was beginning to smell like Teapot Dome (a scandal during the Harding administration) and that Nixon had to “give assurances” that he and his White House aides were not involved in the burglary and would cooperate with the various Watergate investigations. Specifically, Goldwater wanted Nixon to allow his aides to testify before the Watergate Committee. During the course of the interview, Goldwater also defended the president. He said that he believed Nixon was innocent and was doing a “helluva job as President.” But, he added, he might not be able to continue to support Nixon if it turned out he was involved in the burglary.^{Footnote 17}

Many in the press applauded Goldwater’s frank comments about Watergate, crediting him for the president’s subsequent decision to let his aides testify before the Watergate Committee and for his apparent willingness to be more forthcoming about the scandal. One reporter credited Goldwater with Nixon’s decision to give a nationally televised speech on Watergate after four top officials were linked to the scandal. “The Senator, who has emerged as a hero during this sordid episode,” observed Godfrey Sperling, “played an important and, perhaps, decisive role in persuading the President to—at long last—speak out on Watergate.”^{Footnote 18} Los Angeles Times columnist Nick Thimmesh commended Goldwater for having the courage to speak out on Watergate for the sake of Nixon’s presidency and the GOP. “No one in this city is more bothered about the Watergate affair than Barry Morris Goldwater,” wrote Thimmesh. “He was among the first to urge President Nixon to act, and to speak out against this dismal episode, and yet he doesn’t flinch from defending the President or the GOP.”^{Footnote 19}

Not everyone appreciated Goldwater’s criticism of the president. In January 1973, Goldwater’s staff began tracking pro- and anti-Nixon mail, and for the first few months of the year the mail on both sides was light. The volume of pro-Nixon mail increased considerably, however, after Goldwater began to speak out against the president’s handling of Watergate. In May, for instance, Nixon loyalists voiced their anger and disappointment with Goldwater after Washington Post reporter Jack Anderson wrote a column (falsely) claiming Goldwater and fellow Republican Senators Bob Dole and Pete Dominick had been “talking favorably of impeaching President Nixon.”^{Footnote 20} “I just can’t believe the enclosed [Anderson column],” wrote a distraught woman from Springfield, Missouri, “Please let me know if it’s true.”^{Footnote 21} “If the [report about you backing impeachment] is correct,” wrote one couple, “we are crushed with disappointment, and know we can expect no help from you to support our president.”^{Footnote 22} A Nixon loyalist from New York stated that if Anderson’s column was accurate, then Goldwater was a “turn coat and hypocrite.” She told Goldwater she “voted for Nixon and still trusts him” and demanded he stop “kicking the president when he is down.”^{Footnote 23} The Anderson column caused such uproar that Goldwater sent a form letter to Nixon loyalists to repudiate it, and he and his fellow GOP senators sent a letter to Anderson denying their support for impeachment.^{Footnote 24} The column, while baseless, taught Goldwater that publicly calling for Nixon’s removal was political dynamite for him and other Republicans.

When Nixon loyalists wrote angry letters to Goldwater in May 1973, Nixon’s presidency was not in jeopardy. But Nixon’s situation changed markedly over the next couple of months. In June, Dean told the Watergate Committee that the president had participated in a cover-up of the burglary. The following month presidential aide Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a secret taping system in the White House that ultimately corroborated Dean’s testimony. Although Nixon maintained his innocence, his refusal to release the tapes made him look guilty and led to a sharp decline in his approval ratings.^{Footnote 25}

Angered that Nixon was being investigated at all and outraged at the prospect that he might be driven from office, Nixon loyalists created the NCCFP. The committee was started by Baruch Korff, a fifty-nine-year-old Ukranian-born rabbi from Massachusetts, who was so infuriated with the Watergate hearings that he told his wife, “I have got to do something or I’ll explode.”^{Footnote 26} Korff vented his rage in a letter to the New York Times, and, when the paper failed to print the letter, he then bought an advertisement in the paper in which he denounced the hearings as a political witch hunt and asked others to join with him in defending the president. Nixon loyalists heeded the call. Korff received three thousand letters, hundreds of phone calls, and more than $30,000. He raised enough money and recruited enough volunteers to open NCCFP offices and run more advertisements in national and local newspapers. During its one-year existence, the committee produced fifteen “master ads,” which appeared in more than 500 newspapers around the country. All told, the committee started 231 local chapters, spent more than $5.5 million, and enrolled more than two million members.^{Footnote 27}

For Korff and many other NCCFP supporters, the committee’s main role was to serve the presidency, not the president. Korff created the NCCFP because he believed “for four and a half months Nixon’s reputation was publicly attacked, and the authority of the presidency weakened” by the Watergate hearings.^{Footnote 28} The committee’s name, “Fairness to the Presidency,” and its advertisements and fund-raising letters reflected this focus on defending the presidency as an institution. One fund-raising letter, for example, began, “Our ‘Appeal to Fairness’ is crucial to our national survival. The presidency as a coordinate branch of government is threatened.”^{Footnote 29} In his memoir, Korff acknowledged that “many Fairness backers had been motivated by opposition to the liberalism of Nixon’s opponents or by concern for the presidency, not Nixon himself.”^{Footnote 30} After Nixon resigned, Korff still supported him but found himself “making the transition from service to the presidency to servant of the President.”^{Footnote 31}

Korff and other Nixon loyalists believed a powerful president was essential to American strength at home and abroad and feared Watergate would permanently weaken the institution and damage the nation. “President Nixon has been hurt already,” wrote one Nixon loyalist to Goldwater in May 1973, “continued jabs at him can only hurt the presidency and these United States. It is up to U.S. Senators like you” to end Watergate, “which has grown into a flood of U.S. bloodletting.”^{Footnote 32} In early 1974, a Nixon loyalist warned Goldwater that the “persecution” of the president was part of an “ominous trend in the treatment of our last three presidents. One was murdered. . . . A second was driven out” of office. He feared that the “national trauma which would result from the removal of a duly elected president . . . would be beyond comprehension.”^{Footnote 33} Another Nixon loyalist told columnist John Herbers that “Americans should certainly come to realize that more than the man Richard M. Nixon is at stake. The office of the Presidency is hanging on a ledge.”^{Footnote 34}

Believing they were engaged in a patriotic mission to save the presidency and the country, Korff and other Nixon loyalists were zealous, even hysterical, in their defense of Nixon. In its first advertisement, for instance, the NCCFP likened the Watergate Committee hearings to the French Revolution: “The noisy claque that makes up the caucus room audience resembles nothing more than the Paris mob cheering and shouting as the tumbrels deposited their victims before the guillotine.”^{Footnote 35} This ad, David Greenberg has observed, “bore a few hallmarks of an amateur, if not a crackpot—the hyperbole, the generous use of capital letters (in passages besides the one above), and the dense blocks of prose that would daunt all but the most determined readers.”^{Footnote 36} Other NCCFP ads, which included one titled “The Assassins” and another which was a melodramatic letter from Korff to the president’s daughter Julie, were written in the same vein.^{Footnote 37} Nevertheless, a large number of Nixon loyalists not only made it through the dense, feverish prose, but they joined the NCCFP and took up its mission to save the presidency and the country.

It was this widespread support for the NCCFP that eventually convinced Nixon to join forces with it. Initially, the Nixon White House was very skeptical about Korff and his grass-roots organization. It may have even tried to engineer a takeover of the NCCFP.^{Footnote 38} But Korff proved to be an effective organizer. He consciously adopted a nonpartisan, ecumenical message. The committee carefully avoided partisan labels. Its literature did not mention Nixon’s party affiliation and attacked both Democrats and Republicans for their unfair treatment of the president. In addition, the committee welcomed members from across the religious and political spectrum. For example, Korff, a Texas Baptist, and a Carmelite priest were the speakers who opened one of the committee’s luncheon programs at a Washington hotel. Once the White House determined Korff was no kook and saw that the NCCFP represented many Nixon loyalists, it eagerly embraced the group. In December 1973, Nixon invited Korff and other NCCFP leaders to the White House. White House staffers also began to book his appearances and coordinate their activities with the committee. Nixon and other administration officials spoke at committee events and the White House encouraged Korff to write a book defending the president. Korff himself became a minor celebrity. In late 1973, he reportedly made five hundred appearances on radio, television, and other public forums defending the president.^{Footnote 39}

Fighting Off Impeachment

Korff and other Nixon loyalists really began to make themselves heard in the fall of 1973. In October, Nixon fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who he had appointed at the behest of Congress after it became clear that the original Watergate investigation had been fatally compromised.^{Footnote 40} The incident, known as the Saturday Night Massacre, aroused widespread calls for Nixon’s removal, led the House Judiciary Committee to begin a formal impeachment inquiry, and prompted some Republicans to call for the president to resign. At the same time, however, Nixon loyalists became even more vocal in their defense of the president. They made sure Goldwater and other GOP leaders knew they still supported Nixon and that congressional Republicans would pay a price for deserting him.

The Saturday Night Massacre moved the issue of Nixon’s impeachment to the front and center of the Watergate scandal. An NBC poll conducted immediately after Cox’s firing found that 75 percent of Americans disapproved of the president’s action. The same poll also showed that 44 percent of Americans favored impeachment, almost double the number that had supported impeachment in a previous NBC poll in August.^{Footnote 41} To further express their indignation, Americans bombarded Washington with a record number of phone calls, letters, and telegrams.^{Footnote 42} Many newspapers, including many that had supported Nixon’s reelection a year earlier, called for his removal.^{Footnote 43} Responding to public outrage over Cox’s firing, House Democrats introduced twenty-two bills calling for Nixon’s impeachment or an official impeachment inquiry.^{Footnote 44} These bills were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, which began an impeachment investigation in January 1974.

Many congressional Republicans were furious with Nixon for firing Cox and demanded that he take immediate steps to rectify the situation. Although Nixon later wrote that he had been “prepared for a major and adverse reaction to Cox’s firing,” he chose not to consult or warn congressional Republicans before taking an action he knew would be highly controversial.^{Footnote 45} As a result, Republicans were unprepared for the torrent of negative opinion. Senator Jacob Javits, for example, was away from the capital when Nixon fired Cox and when he returned to Washington he was met by 1,150 telegrams, almost all of them critical of Nixon.^{Footnote 46} Many other Republican congressmen reported that their mail and phone calls were decidedly negative.^{Footnote 47} At a Republican leadership meeting a couple of weeks after Cox’s firing, Texas Senator John Tower told White House chief of staff Alexander Haig that “there’s a failure of communication [on the part of the president] with his leaders [on the Hill]. Our Senators have bayonets at our back and we’re unarmed.”^{Footnote 48} Republican leaders on the Hill demanded a “full and complete disclosure” of all Watergate material to investigators, the appointment of a new special prosecutor, complete with “safeguards” preventing his removal, and a “private meeting with the President in order to communicate some deeply held feelings resulting from the present political situation.”^{Footnote 49}

While many congressional Republicans were upset with the president following the Saturday Night Massacre, few actually broke with him. Goldwater was one of his most ardent defenders. He charged Cox with “getting a little far afield” in his investigation and claimed it was “beginning to have a political undertone.” Although Goldwater questioned Nixon’s authority to abolish the special prosecutor’s office, he did not think Nixon’s actions warranted his removal from office. “I can’t see anything that’s happened,” said Goldwater, “that would cause either body (the House or Senate) to vote for impeachment.”^{Footnote 50} Nixon congressional aide William Timmons reached the same conclusion after talking to numerous senators and congressmen from both parties. He found that “no Member is pleased with the current situation and most feel it was badly handled,” but “there is not sufficient support in the House to impeach the President or in the Senate to convict him.”^{Footnote 51} Despite Republican outrage over Nixon’s firing of Cox, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts was the only GOP senator to call for the president’s ouster.^{Footnote 52}

Clearly Nixon’s firing of Cox was unpopular with many GOP voters and caused some of them to break with him. But a sizable minority of Republicans remained loyal to the president. A December Gallup poll showed that 29 percent of Republicans continued to express “strong approval” for Nixon.^{Footnote 53} These Nixon loyalists made sure Goldwater and other congressional Republicans knew it. After a sharp increase in anti-Nixon mail immediately following the firing of Cox, Goldwater’s pro-Nixon mail far outstripped his anti-Nixon mail over the next three months.^{Footnote 54} Ten Nixon loyalists from Dallas, Texas, for instance, sent Goldwater a letter pleading with him to “use your influence to stop talk of impeachment and get on with the business of the country.”^{Footnote 55} Helen Baughman, who was Sergeant at Arms for the Arizona Federation of Republican Women and had worked in the past for Goldwater, wrote the senator to let him know she supported Nixon’s firing of Cox and to urge him to “stand with the president. . . . May I count on you?”^{Footnote 56} Another Nixon loyalist wrote Goldwater that he was “horrified by the threatened impeachment of President Nixon over the firing of an arrogant ass like Archibald Cox.” He implored Goldwater to “use your considerable influence to return some sanity to the elected officials in Washington.”^{Footnote 57}

Although Goldwater defended the president following the Saturday Night Massacre, he continued to criticize Nixon’s handling of Watergate and prodded him to do more to resolve the scandal. After the public outcry over his firing of Cox, Nixon agreed to turn over subpoenaed tapes and documents to investigators. A week later, however, the White House announced that two of the subpoenaed tapes did not exist. Several congressional Republicans acknowledged that this latest revelation was a severe blow to the administration’s credibility.^{Footnote 58} Goldwater went even further. In a press release, he claimed this latest blow might be fatal, “In my opinion the credibility of the President has reached an all-time low from which he may not be able to recover.” He repeated his suggestion that Nixon might have to testify before the Watergate Committee, adding that “I feel now more than ever that this may be the only way out.”^{Footnote 59}

Goldwater’s criticism of the president continued to draw the attention of the press. After the Saturday Night Massacre some of the news media began to view him as the Republican barometer on Nixon’s fate. Journalist Elizabeth Drew called Goldwater’s attack on the president’s credibility “significant.” “Goldwater is considered a moral arbiter,” continued Drew, “and also a signal tower for the right wing of the Republican party.”^{Footnote 60} Months before Goldwater led a Republican congressional delegation to the White House to urge the president to resign, some political commentators anticipated Goldwater would lead such a delegation. As Marquis Childs put it, “The growing belief is that at some point in the near future Republican leaders will descend on the White House . . . [to] tell the President he has no choice but to resign. . . . Such a delegation would necessarily include party conservatives with Sen. Barry Goldwater in the forefront.”^{Footnote 61}

Goldwater continued to publicize his concerns about Watergate, but he also lashed out at “the liberal columnists” for trying to maneuver him into the role of the president’s executioner. “I think they’re trying to set me up,” Goldwater said. They are “trying to egg me into saying ‘Resign, Mr. President,’ and I’m not about to do it.”^{Footnote 62} While Goldwater’s criticism of the press surely resonated with Nixon loyalists, his comments did not completely reassure them about his loyalty to the president. “If you lead a delegation of Republicans to the White House to request the resignation of the president,” wrote one Nixon loyalist, “it will be to your eternal shame.”^{Footnote 63} “I read that you felt that the liberal press was maneuvering your statements to injure President Nixon and I believe you are correct,” wrote another. “Nevertheless, you seem to damn our president with faint praise.”^{Footnote 64}

Despite the continued support of Nixon loyalists, Watergate continued to dog the president and drag down the GOP. After launching a new effort in early November, dubbed “Operation Candor,” to better explain Nixon’s actions to congressional Republicans and the public, the White House revealed that one of the subpoenaed tapes had an 18.5-minute gap, further undermining Nixon’s credibility. At the same time, Republicans dropped farther in the polls. In early November, the Gallup poll found that “Republican congressional strength at the national level was at the lowest point in 38 years.”^{Footnote 65} In his remarks before the Republican Governors Association, George Gallup told GOP leaders that if congressional elections were held now Republicans might win less than one-third of the seats in Congress and thus lose the ability to sustain the president’s vetoes.^{Footnote 66}

Nixon’s inability to extricate himself from Watergate and the party’s declining electoral fortunes led Goldwater and other Republican leaders to seriously consider, for the first time, backing the president’s ouster. In a letter to RNC Chairman George H. W. Bush, Goldwater recommended Bush call a meeting of party leaders to decide how to proceed if the president had not “resolved his difficulties” in the near future. Goldwater told Bush, “This thing has to have some determination—either we back him, or we ask [for] his resignation—and if the latter is the course, then we don’t want to be unprepared when that happens.”^{Footnote 67} The following month Goldwater gave another lengthy interview in which he characterized Nixon as an isolated loner whose failure to deal with Watergate had led many Americans, including some Republicans, to lose confidence in him and support his removal from office. “I don’t think it’s Watergate, frankly,” stated Goldwater, “as much as it’s just a question in people’s mind of just how honest is this man? I hate to think of the old adage, ‘Would you buy a used car from Dick Nixon?’ But that’s what people are asking around the country.” Goldwater acknowledged that there was “not a small number” of Republicans who want to see Nixon removed from office. Alluding to Nixon loyalists, he also said there was another group of Republicans who are “not in love with the president. But they have so much respect for the office, they don’t want to see it damaged” by Nixon’s impeachment or resignation.^{Footnote 68}

Despite the deepening scandal and the polls, Goldwater and other congressional Republicans were still reluctant to move against Nixon. GOP leaders worried about angering Nixon loyalists and wanted to gauge for themselves how many still supported the president. “Every member of Congress,” stated Minority Leader Scott, “is a walking Gallup Poll, and a better one than the poll taker . . . because he has more at stake.”^{Footnote 69} During the holiday recess, Scott and the other Republican “pollsters” confirmed that the GOP still had many Nixon loyalists who expected them to stand by the president. New House Minority Leader John Rhodes, for example, heard from many constituents who demanded he do more to defend Nixon.^{Footnote 70} After returning to Washington, Rhodes and Scott explained the politics of impeachment to columnist Joseph Alsop. “Any Republican who thinks it’s good politics to vote for impeachment,” said Rhodes, “can’t count very well.” “Most of us on the Republican side,” explained Scott, “agree among ourselves that any Republican casting an anti-Nixon vote in an impeachment proceeding will make permanent enemies of about 30 per cent of his constituents. . . . They will never forgive. They will always want vengeance.”^{Footnote 71} In the words of Tennessee Senator William Brock, Nixon loyalists were “the people who work the precincts, the bedrock of the party.”^{Footnote 72} For a minority party that was struggling to overcome years of Democratic dominance, alienating one’s base, however small, was seen as political suicide.

Remaining Loyal to the End

Although congressional Republicans decided to stick with the president after the Saturday Night Massacre and hope he could turn things around before they faced the voters, they eventually broke with him in August 1974 and forced him to resign. But the erosion of GOP support, and thus Nixon’s resignation, was not straightforward or certain. As more GOP leaders talked openly about Nixon’s possible resignation and Congress as a whole moved closer to impeaching the president, Nixon loyalists stepped up their pressure on congressional Republicans. They attended NCCFP events and Nixon rallies, lobbied Congress, and flooded Goldwater and other congressional Republicans with mail. For several months GOP leaders resisted the rising tide of impeachment before finally giving in to it after the president’s participation in the Watergate cover-up could no longer be denied. Even then, however, Goldwater and other GOP leaders, fearing the wrath of Nixon loyalists, tried to play down their roles in Nixon’s downfall.

The GOP’s struggles began early in 1974, when Republicans lost four of five special congressional elections.^{Footnote 73} What made these defeats so significant was that all of them took place in Republican districts, including one that Vice President Gerald Ford had represented for many years.^{Footnote 74} Post-election polls and analysis concluded that the losses were not the result of weak candidates, badly run campaigns, or local issues. Rather, the losses represented a protest vote against Nixon and disgust over Watergate.^{Footnote 75} Democrats, independents, and a sizable number of traditional Republicans voted against Republican congressional candidates because they connected those candidates to Nixon and the Watergate scandal. After the stunning loss of Ford’s former seat, GOP chairman Bush commissioned a survey to determine the reasons for the defeat. A Republican official summarized the findings this way, “The GOP in the 5th District in Michigan had what voters perceived to be the best candidate; they got adequate or equal media and organization coverage, but in the final analysis were beaten by an issue and by a campaign theme they couldn’t or didn’t answer. It was in fact a referendum on the Nixon administration.”^{Footnote 76} Michigan GOP chairman William McLaughlin put it more succinctly, “Everything went our way except Watergate. That killed us.”^{Footnote 77}

To make matters worse, Watergate showed no signs of going away. In February, Nixon’s former lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, became the seventh Nixon official to plead guilty to Watergate-related crimes. In March, seven more former Nixon aides, including those with whom he worked most closely, were indicted for their roles in Watergate.^{Footnote 78} In late April, Nixon, hoping to satisfy prosecutors and silence his critics, released edited transcripts of White House conversations, rather than the actual tapes. The decision turned out to be a disaster. The transcripts showed Nixon to be profane, crude, and cynical. And despite their many omissions, the transcripts contained enough damaging material to make Nixon appear even guiltier. The transcripts were the last straw for many Republican newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, which called for Nixon’s removal.^{Footnote 79}

The release of the tape transcripts, coming on the heels of the series of GOP losses at the polls, caused a massive erosion of support for Nixon among congressional Republicans and led GOP leaders on the Hill to seek Nixon’s ouster. For months, Goldwater, Rhodes, Scott, and a handful of other influential Republicans had discussed the possibility that they might have to go to the White House sometime in the future to urge Nixon to resign. After reading the transcripts, however, Rhodes thought it finally might be time to “play the hole card” and call for Nixon’s resignation.^{Footnote 80} Scott, who had called the transcripts a “deplorable, disgusting, shabby, and immoral performance,” concurred.^{Footnote 81} So did Goldwater. “Up until a week ago I didn’t think this would be necessary,” Goldwater recorded in his journal. “But more and more from my own reasoning and from listening to the growing complaints and objections of Republican members of the Senate, particularly those running for re-election, I have come almost to the conclusion that this should be done.”^{Footnote 82}

But Goldwater, Rhodes, and Scott were still unsure what to do. On the one hand, the special election results and polls suggested that Nixon’s continuation in office would destroy Republican chances in November. “Frankly it gets down to one question,” lamented Goldwater, “does the President want to see the destruction of the two-party system which will most certainly occur if he stays in office?”^{Footnote 83} On the other hand, the president continued to command the allegiance of Nixon loyalists around the country. Goldwater and Rhodes had just returned from a trip to Phoenix, where the president addressed a rally of fifteen thousand Nixon loyalists who cheered wildly when he told them “the time has come to get Watergate behind us and get on with the business of America.”^{Footnote 84} Calling for the president to step down, Goldwater understood, would alienate Nixon loyalists and might doom his reelection chances. “This may be the first movement of what could be the most momentous decision of my life,” wrote Goldwater, “a decision that could well retire me and remove me from politics.”^{Footnote 85} At the time, Arizona was turning more Republican, with many Californians from the conservative bastion of Orange County moving there. But Democrats still held a 14-point advantage over Republicans in the state.^{Footnote 86} Goldwater needed the votes of Nixon loyalists.

GOP leaders proceeded cautiously. They decided to float the idea of voluntary resignation, rather than directly call for the president to resign. During a breakfast meeting with reporters on May 9, the same day the House Judiciary Committee began its impeachment hearings, Rhodes suggested resignation was a “possible option” given the “unfavorable” public reaction to the transcripts and other developments.^{Footnote 87} John Anderson, the third ranking Republican in the House, went a little farther than Rhodes. He said he saw no way Nixon could remain in office and stated that “the welfare of the nation would be best served if the President considered voluntary resignation.” But he made it clear that he was not urging the president to resign. He said he did not “wish to join the resignation chorus. I in no way seek to insist or demand the President resign.”^{Footnote 88} Republican senator Marlow Cook of Kentucky also called on Nixon to “realistically contemplate” resignation but did not endorse it.^{Footnote 89} The president, however, made it clear he would not even consider resigning. Ken Clawson, the White House director of communications, said Nixon would not resign “even if hell freezes over.”^{Footnote 90}

Republican leaders debated whether to send a delegation to the White House to put additional pressure on Nixon to resign but ultimately decided against it. Rhodes backtracked after being inundated with telegrams and phone calls from Nixon loyalists. According to Woodward and Bernstein, he warned GOP House leaders that “the party would self destruct if the leaders didn’t recognize the support that Nixon still had in the country. . . . The support was real, not some fake letter writing campaign dreamed up by the White House.”^{Footnote 91} Rhodes suggested that they postpone any action until after the Memorial Day recess in late May.^{Footnote 92} Scott agreed with Rhodes, concluding that “certainly no collective action is timely now.”^{Footnote 93} Goldwater went along with his Republican colleagues. In an interview with Newsweek, he said that resignation was “frankly” something that Nixon should “seriously consider,” but he rejected the suggestion that a delegation of Republicans should go to the White House to urge Nixon to resign. “I know of no reason now, in the middle of May,” stated Goldwater, “for me or anyone else to go and ask him” to resign.^{Footnote 94}

All the talk of the president’s removal from office prompted Nixon loyalists to redouble their efforts to prevent it. In June, the NCCFP brought together eighteen hundred Nixon loyalists from forty-five states for a luncheon at Washington’s Shoreham Hotel to honor the Nixon family. Nixon and other administration officials spoke at the gathering. In his speech, Nixon trumpeted his foreign-policy breakthroughs with China and the Soviet Union and praised the invited guests for standing up for the “office of the presidency. . . . A strong presidency is essential if we are to have peace in the world.”^{Footnote 95} The following month the NCCFP hosted a five-day convention in Washington that was attended by even more Nixon loyalists. With the House Judiciary Committee set to begin voting on impeachment, Nixon loyalists made sure their voices were heard on Capitol Hill. They met with congressional Republicans and Democrats, prayed against impeachment outside the Judiciary Committee meeting room, and sang “America the Beautiful” and other patriotic songs in the Capitol Rotunda.^{Footnote 96} As columnist Joseph Alsop put it, “The plain fact is that all over the country, the remaining Nixon loyalists have suddenly become vocal, angry, and even vengeful.”^{Footnote 97}

Nixon loyalists who could not make the trip to Washington wrote congressional Republicans to remind them to continue to support the president. Mail from Rhodes’s district, for example, ran strongly in favor of Nixon. From mid-May through Nixon’s eventual resignation in August, Rhodes received twice as much pro-Nixon as anti-Nixon mail.^{Footnote 98} When an aide told Rhodes about the heavy amount of pro-Nixon mail, he replied, “That’s important to me.”^{Footnote 99} Rhodes admitted to a reporter that unless the evidence against Nixon was “positively overwhelming,” he and other House Republicans who were mindful of their political futures would stand with the president. “The party professionals have very long memories,” said the Minority Leader, “especially when it comes to loyalty to the party.”^{Footnote 100}

Once they got a good look at all the evidence against Nixon, however, some House Republicans felt the evidence of the president’s guilt was “positively overwhelming” and voted to impeach him. On July 27, the House Judiciary Committee passed its first article of impeachment, obstruction of justice, with six Republicans joining twenty-one Democrats in voting to impeach the president. The committee subsequently passed two more articles of impeachment. While Democratic control of the House meant that impeachment had always been likely once the Judiciary Committee began proceedings, the bipartisan vote not only made impeachment by the full House all but certain, but it made conviction in the Senate much more probable.^{Footnote 101} Nixon supporters in the Senate could no longer reasonably claim impeachment was simply a “partisan vendetta.”^{Footnote 102}

Nevertheless, GOP leaders made no immediate move against the president. “For the first time,” Goldwater later wrote, “I began to lean toward impeachment. Nixon clearly had abused the power of the presidency, and government would be at a virtual standstill unless and until he left office.” But he, Rhodes, and Scott decided, once again, to wait. They did not believe the evidence against the president was so conclusive that Nixon loyalists would abandon the president. Goldwater still hoped that “an opening would develop which would not make it appear we were putting Nixon up against the wall.”^{Footnote 103} Rhodes actually came to the president’s defense. Following the Judiciary Committee’s vote for impeachment, he called a press conference to announce his intention to vote against impeachment. Before he held the press conference, however, Haig called Rhodes and told him to postpone it for twenty-four hours since the White House would be releasing some information that might influence what he planned to say.^{Footnote 104}

The following day Nixon, under a Supreme Court order, released a number of subpoenaed tapes, including the “smoking gun” tape, which established his involvement in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary. Its release eroded whatever remaining support Nixon had among Republican newspapers. “For all practical purposes,” concludes historian Keith Olson, “the nation’s newspapers were unanimous that Nixon must leave office.”^{Footnote 105} The tape also drained much of Nixon’s remaining political support in Congress. Because it so conclusively proved that Nixon had obstructed justice, some Republicans felt liberated by the news; they no longer feared the backlash from Nixon loyalists and felt they could now vote their consciences. “Now we can do what our wives wanted us to do all along,” quipped one House Republican.^{Footnote 106} The day after the release of the tape, the ten Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment publicly declared their intention to vote to impeach the president when the full House met. Rhodes, too, did an about face, announcing he would vote to impeach Nixon.^{Footnote 107}

Outside the nation’s capital, however, some Nixon loyalists did not give up. Heartened by Nixon’s stubborn refusal to resign, these diehards hoped congressional Republicans could somehow save the president. At a minimum, they demanded that Goldwater and his GOP colleagues stand by Nixon until the end. “As a long time Republican and party supporter,” wrote one Nixon loyalist from Illinois to Goldwater, “I am really appalled at the way party members in Congress are backing down before what every man on the street knows is a Radical-Liberal plot.”^{Footnote 108} One of Goldwater’s constituents from Phoenix implored the senator to “please stand by our president. He has been guilty of many mistakes in my judgment but I don’t think he is a criminal. Who among you in Congress could stand up to the persecution he has endured?”^{Footnote 109} Another letter writer declared he was “fighting mad!” that Goldwater and other Republicans had not rallied behind the president. The former World War II sergeant commanded Goldwater to “get on the backs of the ‘Turn Coat’ Republicans and get in there and fight for the ‘Greatest President ever!’”^{Footnote 110}

But Goldwater was done fighting for the president. Goldwater told Haig that he was “through with the President . . . [and] that he had lied to me for the last time.”^{Footnote 111} After hearing that Nixon still insisted he was innocent and wanted to take his case to the Senate, Goldwater exploded, telling his fellow Senate Republicans, “We can be lied to only so many times. The best thing that he can do for the country is to get the hell out of the White House.”^{Footnote 112} Goldwater reluctantly agreed to lead a GOP delegation to the White House to make it clear to Nixon that if he did not resign he would be impeached and convicted. Goldwater believed his action would “probably kill myself politically because this isn’t going to be popular in Arizona, but I don’t care.”^{Footnote 113} On August 7, Goldwater, Rhodes, and Scott met with the president in the Oval Office. “I will never as long as I live,” recorded Goldwater in his journal, “forget that thirty or forty minutes we spent in there. I was literally on the verge of tears and could see glistening in the other eyes.”^{Footnote 114} Resignation was never mentioned, but the three GOP leaders let Nixon know that he had almost no support left in either the House or the Senate. Goldwater told Nixon he doubted he would get more than fifteen votes to acquit in the Senate, and Rhodes told the president the situation was even worse in the House, with maybe only ten representatives voting against impeachment.

Without Republican support in Congress, Nixon knew he could not survive. The day after the meeting he announced his resignation. Nixon did not specifically blame the loss of GOP support in Congress for his decision to resign, but he alluded to it. He told a national television audience that “to leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body.” However, he had no choice, since he “no longer had a strong enough political base in Congress” to fight to remain in office. He announced he would resign the presidency the following day.^{Footnote 115}