Michael Koncewicz, “Vance and Rufo Want You to Know That Nixon Is Back, Baby, and He’s Better Than Ever” | The Bulwark

On July 9th, 2026, IPK’s Associate Director Michael Koncewicz penned an opinion piece for The Bulwark titled “ance and Rufo Want You to Know That Nixon Is Back, Baby, and He’s Better Than Ever.” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article.

The future of Nixon celebration on the modern right may ultimately depend on the future prospects of JD Vance, the most Nixonian of the current crop of potential successors to Trump. The millennial vice president first outed himself as a Nixon booster at the National Conservatism conference in 2021, where he delivered a thirty-minute speech decrying higher education. After heaping praise on Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan, the then–Senate candidate from Ohio smirkingly quoted the Nixon tapes as a kind of inspirational material to conclude his remarks. “There is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said. . . . the professors are the enemy,” he declared. The provocative quote was his mic-drop moment; it elicited rapturous applause. Vance won his Senate election in 2022; now the young Nixonian is a heartbeat away from the presidency.

While Vance’s speech received some attention at the time, few recognized its significance as longstanding resentments over Watergate began creeping into the conservative mainstream.

One of the right’s most influential activists, Christopher Rufo, has become a passionate advocate for Nixon over the last few years. In a ten-minute video released in 2023 and titled “Nixon Forever,” Rufo insisted the right should follow Nixon’s “blueprint for counter-revolution,” which entailed fighting back against ideologically compromised institutions by moving to “radically reshape the federal bureaucracy.” During an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Rufo added that Nixon was merely a fall guy for Watergate and that he would be vindicated by 2035. The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles has reached a similar conclusion.

Rufo champions Nixon for the former president’s overheated worldview. He believes the right can learn more about defeating the influence of the left from Nixon’s efforts to aggressively dismantle the New Left than from the likes of Reagan or any other Republican president. For people like Rufo, who see DEI coordinators as modern-day Leninist revolutionaries, it really is “Nixon: now more than ever.”

Read the full article here.

Photo Credits: Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark