Nixon had a variety of ways to 'fix the opposi tion, His "parliamentary' opponents were dealt of secret and underhand with by rigging the elections. The liberal, anti. war intellectuals were set an example by the prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg and the attempt to muzzle the press over the Pentagon Papers.
Police agents were sent into the revolutionary student organisations to act as stool pigeons and provocateurs who provoked illegal actions He turned his blind eye to the rackeleering activity and Mafia connections of the bureaucrats in unions like the Teamsters, in exchange There are two distinct elements in the ruling class apposition to Nixon. First of all, the old Republican Party establishment, and important figures within the federal state apparatus. Secondly, the press and the eastern liberals. There are also an important group of conservatives, especially from the more traditional South, who have a strong concern with preserving the old balance of power enshrined in the American constitution. It was a conservative Republican judge who firse suggested there was an attempt to cover-up Warergate last autumn, Republican conscrvatives who first raised the isnue in Congress, and a southern conservative Democrat who was appointed to head the Senate investigating commission, The main desire of Nixon's opposition in the Republican Party and the federal state apparatus is to restore the former balance of power between the President and his cabinet, and the other wings of the state. This means shifting power back from the extensions of Presidentitl authority created by Nixon, and out of the
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Fixing the opposition