In a third talk, drafted by William Safire, one of his more liberal speech writers (at that time), Nixon proposed a “new alignment” to include such unlikely partners as traditional Republicans, the “new South”, some “black militants”, the “silent center” (a tag lifted by Safire from a speech by former Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, a New Deal Democrat), and “thoughtful critics like Daniel Moynihan and Richard Goodwin — both liberals.  Probably Nixon was no more than half serious about some of the elements in his proposed alignment — particularly the black militants.  But the talk showed the way his mind was working; he was groping toward new coalitions — examining unusual options.

From Conservatives in an Era of Change, James Riechley.

It’s a gambit every president ends seems to end up on, and certainly the schemes hatched by the land-sliders.  Franklin Roosevelt was the same way — apparently as early as the late 1910s hoping for there to be a way to breaking off the Conservative South in realigning his party.  Nixon’s “black militants” falls under the sway of the hoped for premise of Moderate Republicans on the premise that they desired de-centralization.  (And remember, the Black Panthers opposed Gun Control where Governor Reagan … well, you know the drill.)  This gets into this area of absurdity, described in Rule and Ruin by Geoffrey Kabaservice:

Reed in his turn carried the Republican party into some strange new territory, particularly when he introduced McClaughry and other Percy assistants to the 3,000 member Blackstone Rangers, Chicago’s most powerful and feared black street gant.  Reed’s work with young people brought him into contact with some of the Rangers.  Members of the New Breed approached the gang to try to get them not to harm Reed’s workers in the district, particularly white volunteers and people on loan from the Percy campaign.  Some members of the New Breed believed that the Rangers could provide access to voters in the housing projects, while others hoped to channel the gang’s energies away from violence and into political activism.  Reed became a liaison between the gang and the Republicans working for the campaign, which […]
McClaughry recalled later that “The Blackstone Rangers were at war with City Hall and the Democratic power structure, and so were the Republicans, so there was some interest in this group.  The Republicans put out a tentative feeler, because if these guys actually voted, or if they intimidated whole neighborhoods into voting, they could be a powerful voting bloc.  But this was risky business, since the Rangers were criminals.” […]
The columnists Evans and Novak reported that Chicago’s Republican money men had “no interest in developing a Negro political base” and seemed “dismayed and somewhat confused by the Republican variety of black power” on display in Reed’s organization.

David Lindsay profers through his political realignments on Obama, trying to match him up with his social conservative politics by way of mentioning every prominent politician in the last century, ignoring Theodore Roosevelt’s Imperialism as against Eisenhower’s “MIC” speech, and that Lincoln Chaffee won as an Independent.  Untangle these threads and they go somewhere… but nowhere terribly expedient.  And it drifts into the bizarre when he throws Kesha Rogers into the mix.

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