ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 highlights how almost all of the service-oriented national party-building that took place after the 1964 loss, and the power it afforded the Right within the party came to an abrupt halt in 1968 with the election of Richard Nixon as president. After the election, management of the party formally shifted to President Nixon, who exhibited, like most presidents before him, a characteristic disregard for the important, but not particularly glamorous work of party building. Nixon had actively courted the Right to help win the nomination, and worked closely with the party during the election, which marked a comeback for a Republican leader who had been written-off by most commentators following his humiliating loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. But, once in office, Nixon’s presidency represented what might best be described as an interlude, organizationally for the Republican service party structure and thus politically for the conservative Right. It was an outcome that highlighted just how important out-party status, and the openness to innovation it fostered had been to the development of the service-party model, and by extension the rise of the conservative Right within the Republican Party in the 1960s and the 1970s.
