It’s amazing how little effect a disgraced Richard Nixon’s resignation had on the future of the GOP. It cost the Republicans the White House in 1976, but his party has held the Oval Office more often than not since. And Nixon’s brand of conservatism, which at least had some room for environmentalism and Affirmative Action, has all but vanished from the Right. In 1967, before he was President, Nixon discussed the GOP’s future with William F. Buckley, Jr.