Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, August 20th, 1974 in a simple ceremony in the White House, President Gerald Ford

nominated Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president.

Ford, of course, had taken over as president after Richard Nixon resigned earlier in that summer.

Here to discuss Rockefeller's VP stint and what came to be known as the Rockefeller Republicans,

the more moderate wing of the GOP is as always Nicole Hammer of

Colombia. Hello Nicky. Hey Jody. And back with us is Harry Anton of CNN.

Hello, Harry. Shalom, my friend. Yeah, so Nelson Rockefeller, his pick

as Vice President by Gerald Ford pretty much

ended whatever honeymoon Ford had

with conservative Republicans,

because they had hated Nelson Rockefeller for a really long time and the fact

that Ford picks him as his new vice president.

Says that Ford isn't going to be a conservative president,

but he's someone who is going to try to reconstruct

this Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party,

this more moderate wing that

conservatives had spent more than a decade trying to get rid of.

Harry, is this move, there's this decision to sort of appease the more moderate wing?

Is that something about shoring up the

GOP in the wake of the of the Nixon scandal or is is there something there

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