Posted on 01/17/2011 9:25:23 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Fifty years ago next week, Richard Nixon stood uncomfortably on the Capitol's inaugural platform and watched his rival John F. Kennedy being sworn in as president. "We won" the election, Nixon fumed, "but they stole it from us."
Indeed, the dirty tricks that helped defeat Nixon were more devious than merely the ballot-stuffing of political lore. In one of the least-known chapters of 20th-century political history, Kennedy operatives secretly paid off an informant and set in motion a Watergate-like burglary that sabotaged Nixon's campaign on the eve of the election.
It began in the fall of 1960, when the Kennedy campaign spread word that Vice President Nixon had secretly pocketed money from billionaire Howard Hughes, whose far-flung business empire was heavily dependent on government contracts and connections. Reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Time magazine corroborated the allegations, but their editors feared publishing such explosive information in the last days of the tightly fought campaign.
So the Kennedys turned to two crusading liberal columnists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, who had been attacking Nixon for the past decade. It was "a journalistic atrocity" to conspire with "the Kennedy hawkshaws to help us get the goods on their opponent," Anderson admitted, but scoring a scoop to destroy Nixon was simply too tempting to pass up.
Anderson dropped by the Washington office of Kennedy lawyer James McInerney. With "a pride that only the diligent investigator can know," Anderson recalled, the Kennedy operative pulled out "a neatly arranged packet which I devoured unceremoniously."
The confidential documents revealed how Hughes had funneled to the Nixon family $205,000 (worth about $1.6 million today) using various intermediaries, including one of Nixon's brothers, to disguise the transaction.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I know how the bay of pigs worked out for several Birmingham
boys and a bunch of Cubans, due to Kennedy.
Whatever this blessed clan did for us, they did out of love for us, the little people? Why can't you see that?
Ted, rising every morning to run quality control on imported beverages, testing organic pharmaceuticals from Colombia, counseling wayward female youth 'til all hours of the morning, and still able to wake up and bring the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 to the floor, bringing much needed Latino diversity to our fair land, inviting in a hundred million people whom theretofore were only known to Americans in the pages of National Geographic." Jack, our POTUS, was counseling many of those same wayward female youths right in the White House. Devoting as many as two hours per day to our nation's business, despite pressing personal demands.
It is right-wing revisionists such as yourself who are besmirching a sacred legacy, not the Kennedys, of holy memory.
You, sir, are an ungrateful wretch!
Cheating to beat the Eeeeeevil Nixon, good. Cheating by Nixon, unconscionable.
Just think if Nixon had actually gotten elected in 1960:
There would be no Viet Nam
There would be no welfare state
Health care would be affordable without government inference
No Watergate
No crackpot immigration bill
No Government unions
The theft of the election in 1960 truly was the beginning of the demise of this great country into a sociality welfare state.
Another damnable Republican Lie! JFK did carry the dead vote, but what put him over the top was live people who voted early, and often. Get the story straight, Fascist racist!
BTW, the Republican candidate, an anti-communist hate monger named Nixon, totally ignored the dead. He just didn't care!
Is it possible that the term often associated with that most-sacred political family, “Camelot”, was intended to be pronounced as a three-word phrase, instead of the one word title?
One of then Mayor Daley’s (Sr.) greatest achievements. His family is still drawing down on that account created when he pushed JFK over the top.
save
Not so fast here, it was old Teddy that anointed the present president as coming in the 'spirit' of JFK. So while as far as we can know there is no biological connection, Hissy Matthews, told US that BamBamKennedy is likened to the youngest brother Kennedy.
Scatological remarks about America's Holy Family are inappropriate on a family site. As it is about 2 'o' clock EST, some of the younger Kennedys may be stirring, may possibly have your remarks read to them by a family retainer, and become very upset. On you, if their rehab schedules get fouled up!
Evil Nixon knew that he could challenge the election results and be justified in doing so. He chose to put the country first and not initiate a challenge.
They found out how many votes they needed to manufacture and created them out of thin air.
What amazes me is the press knew full well how sleazy the Kennedys were, yet they treated them with such a hands off approach. I had been under the impression in those days the press was more civil, or had more respect. It appears the MSM has been in bed with the Dems a lot longer than we imagine.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2478/did-john-f-kennedy-really-write-profiles-in-courage
proves your point.
If they had the goods on Nixon and it sank him in 1960, how come the information wasn’t used in 1968?
What I don’t understand is why J. Edgar Hoover, who must have had enough dirt on Kennedy to raise orchids, never used any of it.
In 1968, Nixon was too far ahead of the democrats for the democrat cheating to have worked.
You can - at best - only “cheat” 1-2% of the votes in an election.
And election cheating works best when just a few precincts in only one county in one or two states are needed, as in 1960 when Kennedy cheated in just two counties: LBJ’s hill country Texas and Illinois’ (Daley’s) Chicago’s Cook County; and in 2000 when Gore tries to cheat his way into office using two democratic counties in Florida. Gore failed when the Miami-Dade County democrat politicians lost their nerve after retreating from the courthouse steps and fled to an inner room.
With Miami’s hundreds of thousands of fake ballots in his grasp, Gore could have used on-going the Palm Beach voter fraud/vote manufacturing efforts to easily slide by the 300 hundred he needed to get national pressure on his side to have Bush “resign” the victory.
Nixon screwed America by not pushing an investigation into voter fraud at the time.....of course after having the recount prove him the winner. This country lives on precedent, not that it was designed to do so but it does. Now it is nearly impossible to have an honest accounting of votes. At that time, judges and the MSM would have at least tried to toe a legal and moral line. Now, no one cares about the law, just the result.
Yes but I fear they’ve simply retreated back to from under some rock to respawn whence they’ll re-emerge.
The shame and humiliation of being exposed for this gave Nixon the hard-on for Humphrey that caused Watergate. Humphrey had his hand in Howard Hugh's pocket, and Nixon wanted documents to prove it.
Of course Howard Hughes was rich enough he just paid BOTH candidates off. (Either way he owned the winner.)
Anyone else remember the Hughes warehouse burglary? The stuff stolen was so damaging to the Rats AND the Republicans, that everything was swept under the rug. The crime went away, and we never heard anything else about it.
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