Nixon was as a bitter, bitter little man. He didn't care about issues, he was into winning at all cost. Reagan was a different animal entirely. He cared about being LIKED. It turned out that both of them happened to be popular with the same kind of people - resistant to change, fearing the outsider and using their enemies best tools against them. Kind of like Mao or Stalin or Hitler did... Ronald Reagan earned his political stripes by making the same speech hundreds of times about the evils of socialized health-care. Nixon lost an election and got angry. Do you see any parallels? The same machine that took Nixon to power was the same one that made sure that G.W. Bush had a second term in office.