Posted on 09/10/2008 5:42:41 PM PDT by Kaslin
The John F. Kennedy legacy came up repeatedly during the Democratic National Convention. But today, would JFK even be a Democrat?
Kennedy supported, in today's lexicon, a George W. Bush-like "belligerent" approach to fighting the Cold War, and told CBS' Walter Cronkite it would be "a great mistake" to withdraw the American presence from Vietnam.
In his 1961 inaugural speech, Kennedy said, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
How would such a man feel about fighting today's global peril — Islamofascism?
Barack Obama points to the 1961 Kennedy-Khrushchev summit to support his desire for meetings "without preconditions" with enemies such as Iran and North Korea.
But Kennedy's secretary of state, Dean Rusk, urged against such a non-conditions-based summit. And later, Kennedy called the summit meeting the "roughest thing in my life. (Khrushchev) just beat the hell out of me. I've got a terrible problem if he thinks I'm inexperienced and have no guts."
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
“And later, Kennedy called the summit meeting the “roughest thing in my life. (Khrushchev) just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts.””
I have heard about that before, JFK coming out shaken and pale as described by someone there.
The democrat party is long long dead.
It is the extreme liberal party now.
JFK wouldn’t recognize it.
>So when the haze disappears, what remains? A man of limited government, low taxes and strong national defense who rejected government redistribution of wealth.<
true.
i tell this to my democrat friends and they think i’m putting them on.
Yes, he would ! Both he and Bobby warned against a welfare state. It freaked them out.
JFK and Sarah Palin would almost MATCH on the issues of taxes, government and national security.
Sarah has a JFK type of energy, excitment and determination to her.
The sad thing about this article is that it’s true. Kennedy was not a limited government guy; in fact, that whole New Frontier thing was vaguely fascist. As for the low-tax claim, surely Kennedy supported low-taxes. However, he did not do so because of some overriding belief in markets. he did so because he was a staunch Keynesian. While Keynesians are unique among socialists in recognizing that economies grow better when the state does not confiscate upwards of 90% of productive people’s wealth, they are still socialists.
I weep that the best argument we can hope for in favor of limited government from Republicans is the fact that “supply-side” economics engender an expansion of the tax base.
Go rewatch the Nixon-Kennedy debates, Kennedy spends the entire time heaping praise on Wilson & FDR and promising Americans all kinds of goodies to ensure the government will take care of you. He just stops short of telling people how the government will pay for it.
Take away Kennedy's staunch anti-Communism and token tax cut, and the other 90% of he was a solid Massachuttes liberal. It's rather ironic that the nation's first "Catholic" friend wanted nothing to do with the traditional values of the Catholic church.
Everything single one of the Kennedy clan in politics today and in the past has been a far-left kook, but we're to believe JFK would be a "Republican" today? The only "Republican" in power now that bears any resemblence to JFK's plans for America is Arnold Schwartzenegger. The left loves JFK, hails Obama as the new JFK, and looks to JFK "camelot" presidency, and we're to believe JFK was a conservative? You don't see any Dems promise to be the reincarnation of Reagan, do you?
Perhaps the only explaination is some freepers seem to get Mike Huckabee and JFK mixed up. One of them was a nanny-stater, big-government, smooth-talking empty suit Elmer Gantry clone who was conservative on just one issue. The other was a fine, patriotic, across the board conservative Governor from Arkansas.
JFK a Republican? NO WAY
Exactly...he would be right where his brother is in outlook today.
a keynesian who cuts the top rate from 91% to 65% is my kind of keynesian.
I see this as the biggest source of rot in the Democratic party, and as a result, it is a rot in our political system.
Since the mid-Sixties, the base of the Democratic party has swung so far left that it is beginning to rival and even surpass the sometimes disturbing expressions of liberalism of European liberals like the German Green Party.
It sounds like a broken record, but there is no Scoop Jackson, and there is no John F. Kennedy. And, to my lasting political sorrow, there is no more Zell Miller. (I occasionally listen to his speech in 2004..."Spitballs?" Man o Man. He was the last man out in the Democratic party.
And there won't be any more Zell Millers in that party, either.
One of the things that steams, disgusts and depresses me is to hear the viewpoints of liberals who hold up JFK as a demigod, as they try to surrender our sovereignty and leave people who are depending on us in the lurch by surrendering us to our foes. Sometimes they simply surrender us with their seemingly innate willingness to vacillate and delay, and sometimes they surrender us by actively aiding and abetting our foes.
And then these people will trot out:
"...We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty..."
His words died with him when Zell Miller turned out the lights and left.
bump
JFK might feel at home in today’s GOP, but with his wealth, his incessant womanizing, his poor health and his equally poor choice of brothers and in-laws, the Dominant Media would turn him into a combination John D. Rockefeller and Blue Beard (literally) on steroids.
The Democrats moved to the extreme left, yes...but little mention is made of the fact that the Republicans moved to the mushy middle (or even slightly left). There's something terribly wrong about the fact that the GOP would nominate McCain, who is comparable to JFK (a Democrat of the '60s) and who is to the left of conservatives of the same era.
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