Law and Order.

President Nixon set the theme for Republican candidates campaigning in the congressional elections of 1970: law and order. After the civil disruptions following May's invasion of Cambodia, law and order was a topic of intense interest to many voters. Extending the themes he had used in speeches earlier in the year, Nixon used the stump as an opportunity to denounce antiwar protesters and to portray them as a threat to public order. Angling for a Republican majority in the Senate, Nixon also put Vice-president Spiro Agnew on the campaign, armed with incendiary speeches on "crime in the streets" and the "the rising tide of terrorism and crime." Republicans embellished these themes with speeches denouncing pornography, marijuana, and forced busing to achieve integration. Republicans charged the Democrats with permissiveness, with tolerating obscenity, immorality, and anti-Americanism. Democrats countered by charging that the Republicans...