Movement Conservatives supported private organizations that defended individualism, religion, and a traditional family structure and that viewed postwar liberalism as a plot to make America socialist. So pervasive was their narrative that when Nixon’s paranoia about enemies led him to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington’s Watergate Hotel, supporters believed him when he claimed that he had to resign not because he had committed a crime but because the “liberal” press made it impossible for him to do his job.
