M. Caldwell Butler, a Key Vote Against Nixon, Dies at 89

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Forty years ago this week, his was a household name. His wife died last month, so maybe he figured there was nothing left to do.

M. Caldwell Butler, a Key Vote Against Nixon, Dies at 89

By DOUGLAS MARTIN JULY 29, 2014

M. Caldwell Butler, who as a first-term Republican representative from Virginia wept after he voted to impeach President Richard M. Nixon, whose landslide 1972 re-election victory had propelled Mr. Butler into Congress, died on Tuesday in Roanoke, Va. He was 89.
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Mr. Butler in 1973 led a group of schoolchildren to hand Nixon a letter thanking him for ending the Vietnam War, and he and his wife had been the president’s guests in the White House family quarters. His party’s initial response to the investigation of a possible presidential cover-up of the break-in at the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Watergate complex in June 1972 had been dismissive. ... But by the steamy summer of 1974, mounting evidence — including secretly made tapes of Oval Office conversations acquired by subpoena — prompted seven Republicans and three conservative Southern Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to waver in their support of Nixon. They self-effacingly called themselves “the unholy alliance.”

From his seat on the committee, Mr. Butler on July 25, 1974, dramatically announced that he would vote for impeachment — a statement that many treated as a bellwether. “For years we Republicans have campaigned against corruption and misconduct,” he said. “But Watergate is our shame.”

Mary McGrory, the syndicated columnist, called Mr. Butler’s words “the single most fiery and liberating sentence spoken” during the Watergate investigations. “He was the first Republican to slash the comforting myth that somebody else, of unknown party origin, was to blame,” she wrote.

From the local paper: Caldwell Butler dies, recalled as being "free of politics'

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. M. Caldwell Butler, A True Bipartisan Politician

M. Caldwell Butler, A True Bipartisan Politician

by Scott Simon
August 02, 2014 8:08 AM ET

M. Caldwell Butler died this week, at the age of 89, just a few days short of another anniversary of the event that etched his name into history.

Butler was a first-term representative from Virginia in 1974, serving on the House Judiciary Committee, which was spending a steamy summer under scorching TV lights to consider the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

Butler was from a proud old Virginia family. He admired Chief Justice John Marshall, of whom he was a descendant, Robert E. Lee, and Richard M. Nixon.

But testimony mounted against Nixon during the summer of 1974, often called Watergate Summer: talk of burglars, bribes and bags of cash, dirty tricks and secret tapes.

Audio; listen to the story.