"I am a jelly doughnut!"
Posted on 08/21/2008 3:33:14 PM PDT by slickeroo
As a muscular counterpoint to Obama's weasel-words in Berlin last month, the Rush Limbaugh show featured excerpts from JFK's famous Berlin speech from 1963: “And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin....Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.“
“At the Brandenburg Gate in 1963, John F. Kennedy tells the communists their days are numbered, “ gushed Rush. “There's not a Democrat alive who would make that speech today anywhere. Democrats today are appeasers. Did you hear any appeasement here?“
We didn't HEAR any, Rush, but we sure SAW plenty during Kennedy's administration―in fact according to his own Joint Chief's of Staff , President John F. Kennedy was responsible for (at the time) “the biggest defeat in America's history.”
In fact, John F. Kennedy with tireless help from media toadies more obsequious than any today, elevated political charade to a level Obama and his staffers can only envision in their sweetest dreams. This was made possible of course, because no alternative media (much less a Rush Limbaugh) existed in 1960-63. Indeed, the very JFK fable that swayed Rush last week might have never gotten its wings if Rush himself had been on the airwaves in 1962 and helped strangle it in the crib.
That very Berlin wall went up (and stayed up) as a direct consequence of JFK's appeasement. The Berlin Wall was raised and the Castro regime was entrenched because Kennedy snubbed Eisenhower's advice and shrank when challenged by the Butcher of Budapest.
Hardly qualifies him as an "idiot," I'd say.
That is not the title on the article.
But is he really worng?
How did “Rush is Wrong” (the original articles headline) become “Rush is an Idiot”??
Glad the moderators found this one and fixed it.
can’t keep with these real-time editorial adjustments.
Why any Republican brings him up as a good example of a President is beyond comprehension.
—bflr—
Eisenhower built a Cuban refugee army, and a Tibetan refugee army. Kennedy abandoned both to their fates. The Tibetans were wiped out to a man. The Cubans were dropped off onto a beach with Castro waiting for them.
If you were one of the men tasked to train these men and prepare them for combat, you’d probably be pretty steamed.
Seems to me Rush merely used the lesser of two possible comparisons which made the comparison more palatable for most people under 60 who don’t know anything but the celebrated part of JFK’s history.
I agree - but I can understand the motivation.
If you want to make a point and demonstrate the vapid shallowness of the current Democrat Presidential candidate - its easier to contrast him against a Dem icon, without pointing out that said icon was also very flawed....(because then you have to start laying out fairly lengthy records and explanations -- and you quickly lose the audience). I think Rush made the point he intended to make.
Hmmm. wasn’t Eisenhower the one who ceded Cuba to the communists by stopping the sale of weapons to Cuba?
I don't think it's that he falls for anything but that he is less than scrupulous with facts when he wishes to make a point.
"I am a jelly doughnut!"
From 1945 on, the fact was that the U.S. military, even with allies like France and England (let alone a rearmed Germany) was vastly and overwhelmingly outnumbered on the ground in Europe. To raise the specter of atomic bombs flying over every touchpoint was not only dumb geo-politically, but it was lunacy. JFK made the best of a bad situation, turning a political and military reality on the ground into a massive propaganda victory for the U.S.
Not to mention that the entire fiasco depended entirely on Castro being assassinated before the op actually began.
Good point. Repubs often point toward JFK and even more often toward FDR in order to make a point. Not because these are good presidents but because Dems believe they were good presidents, so they serve to make a point.
As you say, they are icons in the Dem world.
Eisenhower was charged as being either a conscious member of the Communist conspiracy or a Communist dupe.
As for JFK, like all Democrats he was a socialistic liberal who caved to the Commies.
Everyone talks about his great victory in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but if you study what really happened you will find it was not a victory. Rather it resulted in a negotiated settlement with the US withdrawing our missiles from Turkey in return for the withdrawel of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
As a human being, maybe. Though really, we know a lot more now about Jack's adventures than Teddy's. Ted could have been a lot worse than anyone knows.
But politically, Kennedy was more conservative than today's Democrats. Even in his own day, he wasn't that liberal, and was criticized for it by the left.
"What JFK would do now" is nonsense. He would have followed his family and his party leftwards and do and say what they do and say. But it doesn't hurt to point out that in his own day a Democrat icon was far from the party's current beliefs.
JFK authorized the use of herbicides in SE Asia in 1961. Nixon stopped their usage 10 tears later. But Nixon was the heavy, and JFK did it for the chuldren,/
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