Deep down in a cache of documents at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum sits a 15-page memorandum entitled "A Plan For Putting The GOP On TV News."
The memo, dug up by journalist John Cook in 2011, was written two years before Nixon’s 49-state landslide re-election in 1972. Even five decades ago, Republicans perceived news coverage of their party to be the unfair product of a liberal media corps.
The ideas underpinning the memo fueled massive changes in both media and political strategy during the past half-century. Those changes, in turn, explain why Republicans have reacted with so little alarm to the findings of the Mueller report.