Thread by @KevinMKruse

One thing I left out in this thread -- the Agnew speech that inspired anti-Semites was written by none other than Pat Buchanan.

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1098791517668421638

The Nixon-Agnew message was largely shaped by two very different speechwriters -- the erudite William Safire and the hard-edged Pat Buchanan.

As he noted in his memoir Before the Fall, Safire crafted some memorable lines for Agnew, including the famous alliterative phrases:

But that Des Moines speech -- the one that anti-Semites responded to -- wasn't written by Safire (who was himself Jewish) but by Buchanan.

As Safire recalled, Buchanan bore most of the responsibility for it and excitedly noted that the confrontational tone "flicked the scab off"

As Safire notes there, Nixon signed off on the speech himself.

And as we know from the Oval Office tapes -- including this 2/1/1972 conversation with Billy Graham and H.R Haldeman -- Nixon himself complained at length that the media was "totally Jewish."

Note that Nixon qualifies his complaints about Jews there to say "the best Jews are Israeli Jews"

His vice president, as we know now, later sought and received funds from Saudi Arabia to "continue my fight against the Zionist enemies who are destroying my once great nation"

While Agnew went looking for funds to fight "Zionist enemies," Pat Buchanan -- the man who wrote the Des Moines speech -- launched a political career of his own.

When Buchanan launched his 1992 GOP presidential campaign, questions about his anti-Semitic comments came up repeatedly.

Here's Alan Dershowitz in Nov. 1991, likening Buchanan to former Klan leader David Duke, who'd just lost a race as the GOP nominee for governor in Louisiana.

Some prominent conservatives denounced Buchanan for his anti-Semitism, just as President George H.W. Bush had denounced David Duke.

Here's William F. Buckley in December 1991, for example.

The criticism even came from Buchanan's old writing partner in the Nixon White House, William Safire:

While he didn't win the nomination, Buchanan still made a strong run in the primaries, leading to his angry "culture wars" speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention.

Again, as Molly Ivins joked, it probably sounded better in the original German.

Across his career, from his role as a Nixon-Agnew speechwriter through his time in the Reagan White House and on to his own presidential campaign in 1992, Buchanan became a more prominent voice in the Republican Party, moving from writing speeches to giving them.

By 1999, he was being denounced -- by Donald Trump -- as "beyond far right" and only appealing to the "wacko vote."

buzzfeednews.com/article/andrew…

But now, 20 years later, the gap between Donald Trump and Pat Buchanan doesn't see that wide, as this great piece by @AriMelber makes clear.

We've come a long way.