united states flew to california to give a speech. it was a speech that he knew he would be giving to some of his most die hard fans. people who would follow him until the end of the earth. and that was crucial at that moment in his political life, because just a few weeks earlier, the wall street journal was first to report that that same vice president, spiro agnew, he was under federal criminal investigation for potential felony corruption charges, bribery, extortion, tax evasion, a bunch of stuff. this was very shocking front page news at the time. it was very damaging news, for obvious reasons, to the vice president, and he was just completely enraged about it. so he flew out to california september 29th, 1973, to give a talk to his most rabid supporters. it was the national conference of republican women. and, um, these women were hard core activists. as a group, generally speaking, they were quite right wing and quite devoted to spiro agnew. agnew was seen as being
speech. and it was a speech that he knew he would be giving to some of his most die-hard fans, people who would follow him to the end of the earth, and that was crucial at that moment in his political life because just a few weeks earlier the wall street journal had been first to report that that same vice president he was under federal criminal investigation on potential felony corruption charges, bribery, extortion, tax evasion, a whole bunch of stuff. this was very shocking front page news at the time. it was very damaging news for obvious reasons to the vice president, and he was completely enraged about it. so he flew out to california to give a talk to his most rabid supporters. it was the national conference of republican women. and these women were hard core activists, as a group generally speaking they were quite right-wing, and a group generally speaking they were quote devoted to superhero agnew. this has been forgotten in history but agnew was seen as being much
core activists. as a group, generally speaking, they were quite right wing and quite devoted to spiro agnew. agnew was seen as being much more hard right, much more pugnacious and compromising than the old squish president nixon was. so the hard right and real activists of the republican party, they loved agnew even more than they loved richard nixon. so while agnew, their guy, was embattled by this reported criminal investigation, he goes up there to give a speech. and what he told them at that speech started off blunt, but kind of normal. he said i am innocent of the charges against me. he then told them, this was slightly more surprising, he told the crowd that he was going to use the courts himself to turn the tables and
speech. and it was a speech that he knew he would be giving to some of his most die-hard fans, people who would follow him to the end of the earth, and that was crucial at that moment in his political life because just a few weeks earlier the wall street journal had been first to report that that same vice president he was under federal criminal investigation on potential felony corruption charges, bribery, extortion, tax evasion, a whole bunch of stuff. this was very shocking front page news at the time. it was very damaging news for obvious reasons to the vice president, and he was completely enraged about it. so he flew out to california to give a talk to his most rabid supporters. it was the national conference of republican women. and these women were hard core
overwhelmingly conservative party in the terms of the way their voters describe themselves when you ask, do you think you re a conservative, moderate or liberal the democratic party is not a mirror image of that. and even now with self-defined liberals at a historic high in the democratic party, they re only about half of democratic partisans and democratic primary voters. the other half of that democratic electorate is people who consider themselves moderate or even conservative. and when you go out in the early primary states and you talk to voters, these are, you know, you have to think they re hard core activists. they re going to presidential candidate events a year before voting even starts. they re very enthusiastic committed democrats, and yet a lot of them will tell you, you know, certainly many of them will say oh, yes, i m very liberal, i want a candidate who supports a liberal agenda. or a lot of them will tell you, no, i want someone who can speak to the middle, who can b