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JFK, Conservative
http://www.amazon.com ^ | October 15, 2013 | Ira Stoll

Posted on 10/24/2013 9:26:12 AM PDT by NKP_Vet

John F. Kennedy is lionized by liberals. He inspired LBJ to push for landmark civil rights laws. His “New Frontier” promised new spending on education and medical care for the elderly. His champions insist he would have done great liberal things had he not been killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.

But what if we judge him by the lengthy record of his actual political career, in historical perspective? What if this hero of liberals was, in fact, the opposite of a liberal?

As Ira Stoll convincingly argues, by the standards of both his time and our own, John F. Kennedy was a conservative. His two great causes were anticommunism and economic growth. His tax cuts, which spurred one of the greatest economic booms in our history, were fiercely opposed by his more liberal advisers. He fought against unions. He pushed for free trade and a strong dollar. And above all, he pushed for a military buildup and an aggressive anticommunism around the world. Indeed, JFK had more in common with Ronald Reagan than with LBJ.

Not every Republican is a true heir to Kennedy, but hardly any Democrats deserve that mantle. JFK, Conservative is sure to appeal to conservative readers — and will force liberals to reconsider one of their icons.

(Excerpt) Read more at amazon.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature
KEYWORDS: bookreview; conservatives; jfk; presidents
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To: onyx
The Republicans didn’t fancy “Catholics.”

The Republicans were Catholics.

41 posted on 10/24/2013 11:01:32 PM PDT by MARTIAL MONK (I'm waiting for the POP!)
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To: ansel12

Well at least he’s not lionizing Martin King

And I like NKP vet

But not over Kennedy who was about worthless


42 posted on 10/24/2013 11:03:18 PM PDT by wardaddy
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To: MARTIAL MONK

We will have to disagree.
I think they were largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. (WASP)


43 posted on 10/24/2013 11:38:47 PM PDT by onyx (Please Support Free Republic - Donate Monthly! If you want on Sarah Palin's Ping List, Let Me know!)
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To: MARTIAL MONK

Catholics have always been democrats, the first election republicans won the Catholic vote was in 1972 when Nixon ran for reelection, it is disputed but possible that Eisenhower may have won their vote for his reelection in 1956.

Protestants have always voted republican, except in 1932, 1936, and in 1964.


44 posted on 10/24/2013 11:58:22 PM PDT by ansel12 ( Democrats-"a party that since antebellum times has been bent on the dishonoring of humanity.)
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To: onyx
I think they were largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. (WASP) Blacks were also republican until the 1936 election, and the GOP was especially strong among women.
45 posted on 10/24/2013 11:59:58 PM PDT by ansel12 ( Democrats-"a party that since antebellum times has been bent on the dishonoring of humanity.)
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To: wardaddy

See post 16, America did not survive the 1960 election of JFK, his immigration goals destroyed us.


46 posted on 10/25/2013 12:02:09 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Democrats-"a party that since antebellum times has been bent on the dishonoring of humanity.)
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To: onyx
Catholics were caught in the anti-immigration wave early last century. There was a lot of anger vented with much of it directed at the common religion of the Irish, the Poles and the Italians.

The Catholics did the one thing that could reverse the stereotypes. Their relentless insistance on education for their children pulled them ahead of their contemporaries and solidly into the middle class.

There are still legacy Democratic / Catholic strongholds but they are susceptable. I am part of a group that is building the next generation of the Republican Party. We are hunting down the bright young kids with leadership ability and dragging them into the Party. When I am given a name and punch someone's doorbell the chances are better than even that I will be talking to a Catholic.

The Reagan Revolution was Catholic. The campaign was by Catholics and aimed at Catholics. Reagan's philosophy and base was Western Republican (Mormon) but it was Catholics that ground out the Reagan agenda.

47 posted on 10/25/2013 3:35:44 AM PDT by MARTIAL MONK (I'm waiting for the POP!)
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To: MARTIAL MONK
The Reagan Revolution was Catholic

That's funny, I seem to recall something about '76, North Carolina, Evangelicals, Jesse Helms and the Congressional Club.

Revisionist history won't work until the people who actually remember are dead and gone.

48 posted on 10/25/2013 3:41:00 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: ansel12

“What is this creepy obsession you have with promoting the man that Reagan compared to Karl Marx and Hitler as a liberal, and that led him to campaign as a “democrat for Nixon because he was the conservative?”

The “creepy obsession” is your abnormal, amateurish rants aboutJohn Kennedy, who for the record was every bit as “conservative” as RINOs like George W. Bush who HAVE DESTROYED conservatism in the republican party and gave us King Obama. Big government GW Bush who’s lasting legacy will be his gift to American of a socialist by the name of Obama..........who flatly stated he would transform American and is delivering on his promise.

Never once have a read a post from you that attacks Obama the way you have attacked Kennedy. And I didn’t write the book about JFK. A conservative wrote the book and his name is Ira Stoll.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Stoll


49 posted on 10/25/2013 5:00:34 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
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To: ansel12

To paraphrase The Great One, ‘It isn’t so much that NKP_Vet is ignorant. It’s just that he knows so many things that aren’t so.’


50 posted on 10/25/2013 8:10:56 AM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: onyx

Well, yes, there was that, too.


51 posted on 10/25/2013 8:21:57 AM PDT by Flash Bazbeaux
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To: NKP_Vet

This is creepy and unexplained, why do you want to sell conservatives on the hero of the left that caused the final destruction of America by stealing the 1960 election from Richard Nixon?

Reagan hand wrote a letter to vice President Nixon offering his services as a democrat to fight the election of the liberal JFK, who Reagan described as being of the Karl Marx left.

JFK was a disaster for America, from the immigration that has killed our nation and made us permanently liberal, to his unionizing the government, to creating homelessness by emptying the mental hospitals, to creating the radical 1960s by getting us into a war in Vietnam, to LBJ, to creating the Kennedys as a permanent royal family of leftism and abortion and immigration? JFK was a personally corrupt, despicable piece of scum from his girlfriends getting abortions to having federal agents procure him prostitutes, to exploiting and passing around teenage girls, he was scum.

What is your angle and why are you so desperate as to describe the democrats as the conservatives and Reagan and the republicans as the liberals?

What is your angle?


52 posted on 10/25/2013 8:30:41 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Democrats-"a party that since antebellum times has been bent on the dishonoring of humanity.)
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To: ansel12

JFK forever ruined politics in this country, because after him, it all became about “style over substance”....It didn’t matter where you were on the issues, all that mattered was how good you looked on TV. He became the prototype for what low-information voters look for in a candidate.


53 posted on 10/25/2013 8:33:58 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: MARTIAL MONK

Well first you need to get Catholics to start voting republican, something that we may never see again and have only seen five times in our history since they are so devoted to democrats like Obama and Gore.

In 1980 we aren’t even sure that Reagan won 50% of the Catholic vote, some polling says it was less than half.

Catholics have taken California for the democrats, the left’s hope for the future is that they take Texas to knock out conservatism forever, and make the Kennedy dream a done deal.


54 posted on 10/25/2013 8:46:17 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Democrats-"a party that since antebellum times has been bent on the dishonoring of humanity.)
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To: dfwgator
JFK forever ruined politics in this country, because after him, it all became about “style over substance”....It didn’t matter where you were on the issues, all that mattered was how good you looked on TV. He became the prototype for what low-information voters look for in a candidate.

To quote Ronald Reagan on just what you said, (and on the man that NKP_Vet tried to tells us was "One of Reagan’s political heroes") from the letter when Reagan sought to serve the conservative opponent of JFK to keep JFK from ever becoming president and destroying America.

"One last thought,— shouldn’t some one tag Mr. Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with it’s proper age? Under the tousled boyish hair cut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago."

55 posted on 10/25/2013 9:04:56 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Democrats-"a party that since antebellum times has been bent on the dishonoring of humanity.)
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To: rockrr

Same thing I’ll tell you. You got a problem with the posting on JFK, how about writing the author of the book.
I don’t write it. A CONSERVATIVE author wrote the book. Oh, but wait, he’s just a dumbass. You and others know more than than CONSERVATIVE writers that have have actually published books.


56 posted on 10/25/2013 9:28:09 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
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To: NKP_Vet

Why bother? He’s no more likely to be receptive to my skepticism than you are. That makes my (and others) skepticism no less valid.

You wish to impute conservative values to a notorious opportunist. Bully for you but I’m not buying.


57 posted on 10/25/2013 9:32:29 AM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: ansel12

Ronald Reagan was still making movies when he suppossedly had all this hatred for JFK. And let’s not forget he was a democrat in the 50s. Oh, but that’s OK, it was Reagan.
And you seem to have forgotten that Reagan granted AMNESTY to millions of illegals when he was still president. George W. Bush would have torn down the borders if he could have.


58 posted on 10/25/2013 9:36:35 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
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To: Buckeye McFrog

at least one good platform


59 posted on 10/25/2013 9:38:01 AM PDT by morphing libertarian
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To: rockrr

Kennedy had more “conservative values” than Nixon, who never saw a welfare program he didn’t like. He gave us affirmative action, the EPA. He took the gold standard and based it on credit. He cut and ran from Vietnam. He also called for universal health insurance.


60 posted on 10/25/2013 9:45:13 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
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