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The year that broke US politics: what 1968 can tell us about 2024
theguardian ^ | 08/12/2023 | Rich Tenorio

Posted on 08/14/2023 10:48:45 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27

piritual messages made the Rev Billy Graham famous, but it was a different sort of message that he transmitted to Lyndon B Johnson in September 1968. Earlier that tumultuous year, the president announced on live television that he would not run for re-election. The race to succeed him pitted the current vice-president, Hubert H Humphrey, against a previous VP, Richard Nixon. An anti-establishment third-party candidate, George Wallace, a segregationist former governor of Alabama, was attracting unexpected support, amid backlash to Johnson’s Great Society reforms.

Graham’s message to Johnson came from Nixon and contained an unorthodox proposal. If elected, Nixon offered to make a variety of conciliatory gestures to Johnson, from avoiding criticism to meeting him for consultations, even crediting him with a role in ending the Vietnam war, once it was finally over.

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


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: 1968; 2024; brok; politics
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To: Responsibility2nd

1960 was a stolen election. That was more of the turning point. Look at the country then: still normal and moral. Within a decade, it was absolute bedlam.


21 posted on 08/15/2023 12:18:23 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: Old West Conservative

The last right-of-center Democrat President was Grover Cleveland. JFK was a left-winger, as has been every single Democrat nominee since 1896 with the lone exception of 1924.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4174919/posts?page=42#42

https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4174919/posts?page=56#56


22 posted on 08/15/2023 12:25:07 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: fieldmarshaldj
GOP nominee in both 2008 and 2012

Wasn't that around the time of Fred Thompson? He was the only genuine American of the bunch, the GOP heir apparent, and should have been the nominee.

But he didn't want it. You could tell. turns out Fred's wife berated him into running against his will.

We had to wait for 2016 for the Real Deal to appear.

23 posted on 08/15/2023 8:19:33 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: Pete Dovgan

After 2008, Obama radicalized the Left and a lot of America.


24 posted on 08/15/2023 8:23:23 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: dfwgator

After 2008, Obama radicalized the Left and a lot of America.


25 posted on 08/15/2023 8:24:26 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: Jim W N
After 2008, Obama radicalized the Left and a lot of America.

Obama radicalized Government.

26 posted on 08/15/2023 8:25:25 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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To: Jim W N

Obama was the Trojan Horse.


27 posted on 08/15/2023 8:25:37 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: 1Old Pro

More accurately, Obama radicalized the Left who already had control of government and much of America’s institutions.

With Obama’s shove and continued direction (behind that green curtain over there) the Left blasted America into Never-Never Land.


28 posted on 08/15/2023 8:30:17 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Even had he not been shot, it is unlikely that RFK would have gotten the nomination in 1968. The bosses still controlled the Dem party, and they didn’t like/trust him. But under the post-1968 changes that shrank the bosses’ power and made primaries more important, he easily could have gotten the nomination in 1972 or 1976.


29 posted on 08/15/2023 8:32:03 AM PDT by Burma Jones
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To: ChicagoConservative27
1968 did see the breaking of the old presidential nomination system. There were few primaries and a candidate could still be chosen at the convention. That happened with Humphrey in 1968, and that was the last time that happened. I'm not sure politics was "broken" in any other way that year.

The article is a plug for a new book, The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 by Luke A. Nichter. Apparently, Nichter is a little skeptical of the idea that Nixon conspired with South Vietnam to scupper the peace talks. From what I can make out, he doesn't say that it definitely didn't happen or couldn't happen, but he didn't find evidence for it. So it's just possible that the story was another Russiagate hoax.

Nichter does say that Nixon and Johnson were in touch through Billy Graham, and that Nixon influenced John Connolly, not to accept a VP nomination from Humphrey. That might have influenced the election, or it might not have.

2008 was nothing compared to 2020. Neither was 1992.

30 posted on 08/15/2023 8:33:38 AM PDT by x
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To: Jim W N

Thompson had lymphoma. It was in remission in 2007, but it came back and killed him in 2015. Maybe his wife was wise and had the right idea.


31 posted on 08/15/2023 8:39:20 AM PDT by x
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To: dfwgator
Obama was the Trojan Horse.

Yup. He had had all the totalitarian goodies.

Obama began by unapologetically force-feeding the Left until the Left saw they could get away with open radicalization and government takeover.

There was no opposition, the GOP being "Leftist Light" ("Hey, this tastes great, and it's less filling...").

32 posted on 08/15/2023 8:40:32 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: x

2008 was Fred Thompson’s time. He could have taken the GOP and would have been a tough opponent for Obama.

IF he had been ready to save America with all his heart, like Trump. But his heart wasn’t in it.


33 posted on 08/15/2023 8:47:01 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: Jim W N

As it turned out, Fred was too old to have a go by 2008 (he would die in 2015 at just 73, so he would not have even been able to complete two terms. Plugs the Pedo is just 3 months younger than he would’ve been today). He should’ve run for the TN Governorship or Senate back in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, making him a viable Presidential candidate by the ‘90s.

He was so disgusted and burned out by serving just 8 years in the Senate. It disillusioned him and broke his heart. He realized that the only time Demonrats and Republicans come together is to persecute Republicans. Corrupt Demonrats are exempt. Watching space hero turned treasonous Sinator John Glenn obstruct and run out the clock on the Chinagate hearings (for a ride on the Space Shuttle) was the final straw for him in deciding to retire before he got assimilated into the hive.


34 posted on 08/16/2023 2:47:02 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

I think Fred’s disgust, burn out, and disillusionment were signs that

1) he was the real deal Patriot who loved America and its values, and

2) he could have made a difference in the WH, if only he had the kind of determined fortitude as Trump who I think was older than Fred in his first WH run.

Sadly, it appears Fred had just given up and sometimes that makes one vulnerable to things like cancer. If he had fully and vigorously run and won and served in the WH, it’s very possible cancer wouldn’t have got him.

I liked Fred. Seemed very sensible and down to earth.


35 posted on 08/16/2023 7:53:46 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: ansel12

At last smeone on the site not part of the Kennedy Cult!


36 posted on 08/16/2023 7:56:07 AM PDT by Reily (!!)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
HYPOTHETICAL Scenario:

The GOPe succeed in their dirty scheming with the Communists, and Trump is uh, not the Republican nominee. (BTW one does plan to support Trump until the end, no matter how it turns out.)

RFK has in a similar way been shunned by his own party which as we all know has gone full-on Gay/Trans/Communist, and someone else gets the nomination. For now let's say BM, so RFK runs as a Bullmoose or whatever.

How good a candidate is RFK? What are his odds, notwithstanding a problem having to do with no Secret Service protection?

37 posted on 08/16/2023 8:08:53 AM PDT by OKSooner (Maybe Quix was right about some stuff. Pronouns=(XY, XYim, XY's))
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To: ansel12
OK, I'll take the bait.

WHY do you say something like that about JFK?

JFK was known by everyone who was paying attention to be, uh, no choirboy but you've made a very strong accusation that places him in very distinctive company.

What do you have that the rest of us don't know, except that he WAS dirty corrupt bastard Old Man Kennedy's son, and what would it have to do with his nephew RFK today, anyway?

38 posted on 08/16/2023 8:15:34 AM PDT by OKSooner (Maybe Quix was right about some stuff. Pronouns=(XY, XYim, XY's))
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To: OKSooner

From Newsweek— https://www.newsweek.com/jfk-intern-mimi-alfords-shocking-affair-tell-all-65693

“The president of the United States enjoyed a daily swim in the White House pool and cocktails after hours, when daiquiris and cheese puffs were passed around. Also provided for the president’s pleasure were clueless virgins from Miss Porter’s School, the first lady’s white-glove alma mater.

When Mimi Alford was summoned to swim on her fourth day as a White House intern in 1962, no one told the chaste, uncomprehending teenager that the purpose of the invitation was to serve her up in a borrowed bathing suit for inspection by President John F. Kennedy.

That evening, Alford—who had never had a boyfriend—was surprised when White House aide David Powers plied her with drinks, and stunned when JFK offered her a private tour of the residence. Moments later, she says, the president pushed her down onto his wife’s bed, pulled off her underwear, and unceremoniously deflowered her.

Alford says she spent the next 18 months as JFK’s sexual plaything, spirited into and out of bedrooms in Washington and elsewhere by Powers. She then waited half a century before telling her story in an explosive new memoir called Once Upon a Secret.

Some of the book’s most chilling revelations are the things that didn’t happen. As Alford describes it, when JFK first had sex with her, her reaction was unquestioning acquiescence. Although her previous experience was limited to a single kiss in the eighth grade, she didn’t resist the president, nor did she say a word about how she felt, to him or anyone else. It was as if her whole life had prepared her for such a moment—which it had. A man—a very powerful man who was old enough to be her father—wanted a quickie with her, and her only role was to oblige.

Also absent from their “affair” was the kind of romantic tenderness most lovers take for granted; in all the time they spent together, JFK never kissed her, she says.

According to Alford, her passive acceptance even extended to the day JFK told her to perform oral sex on Powers, as JFK watched. Both she and Powers were humiliated. The following year, when she says JFK told her to do the same thing for his brother Teddy, Alford uncharacteristically refused. Shortly thereafter, their relationship ended abruptly with JFK’s assassination.”


39 posted on 08/16/2023 8:21:37 AM PDT by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))
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To: ansel12

OK, thanks. This adds credibility to the theory that Jackie uh, looked the other way as LBJ et al planned the big day.

What does it have to do with Bobby?

Bobby Jr, not RFK Sr.


40 posted on 08/16/2023 8:27:01 AM PDT by OKSooner (Maybe Quix was right about some stuff. Pronouns=(XY, XYim, XY's))
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