The graves of President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon Some historians say that Nixon's Southern Strategy turned the Southern United States into a Republican stronghold, while others deem economic factors more important in the change.[204] Throughout his career, Nixon moved his party away from the control of isolationists, and as a Congressman he was a persuasive advocate of containing Soviet communism.[283] According to his biographer Herbert Parmet, "Nixon's role was to steer the Republican party along a middle course, somewhere between the competitive impulses of the Rockefellers, the Goldwaters, and the Reagans."[284]