JFK, Conservative

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

[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.

[NKP_Vet]

He was also pro-life (appointing pro-life Byron White to the Supreme Court) and would have thought the idea of sodomite "marriage" the dumbest thing he ever heard in his life. And last, but not least, if JFK were alive today and in politics, he would be a Tea Party conservative. He would have absolutely nothing to do with the anti-God, left-wing nutcases that make up the democrat party.

[Flash Bazbeaux]

I just recently mostly read (partly skimmed) a biography of old Joe Kennedy, which was very sympathetic, probably too much so, but it more or less made the point that Joe became a Democrat because the Republicans would not accept him.

[Venturer]

He was also a womanizer who damned near got us all nuked.

[Hardraade]

He was also pro-Adolf Hitler, the scum. JFK is not a good role model for conservatives, no matter how they might want to dig him out of the cellar.

Druggie wh*remonger got himself a little too involved with the mob molls.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

The Democrat Party has been extremely progressive since 1912.

Etremely statist since 1932.

Extremely radical Left since 1972.

And yes, JFK today would be considered almost a reactionary compared to contemporary Democrats.

[Buckeye McFrog]

His two great causes were blondes and nepotism.

[pgkdan]

Why does anyone want to count this intellectually light weight, morally bankrupt empty suit among our ranks as a conservative?

[deadrock]

Is this now a Bohner thread?

[pgkdan]

but it more or less made the point that Joe became a Democrat because the Republicans would not accept him.

The Republicans wouldn't accept him? In what way? He could have registered as a Republican w/o anyone knowing if he wanted to. My guess is that the GOP wouldn't take a bribe with a guarantee of something like Ambassador to the Court of King James as payback.

Old Joe was a philandering, whiskey smuggling limosine gangster. I'm glad he wasn't a Republican.

[pgkdan]

Lol!

[nathanbedford]

Kennedy was an oxymoron, a patriot and a fraud, a patrician with appeal as a lunchpail politician, a shining hero who was morally dissolute, a picture of health who was a dying junkie, an orator who offered transcendental vision but who was essentially a cynic.

The iconography of Camelot, after a half-century, has been exposed for the myth it always was. Ironically, it is the myth and not the man which has done so much for the Democrat party as the Democrats have run on the myth in every cycle. It provided cover for one of the most debased politicians in American history, Teddy Kennedy, to survive scandal, indeed even negligent homicide, and cause the Republic untold harm during his long tenure in the United States Senate.

The entire myth was a lie, a lie in the sense of Obama's charisma is a lie, it is a myth served up by elite Democrats to be accepted by rank-and-file Democrats and impressionable but naïve Americans who want to believe in their heroes.

[dfwgator]

Who was more liberal back then, Kennedy or the Rockefeller Republicans?

[NKP_Vet]

Suggest you drop Ira Stoll a line and tell him all the research he did about JFK is just a bunch of lying nonsense.
He should be impressed.

Absolute fact is JFK appointed pro-life Byron White to the US Supreme Court. White and a very young William Rehnquist,
appointed by Nixon were the only two that didn’t give this country legalized murder.

Five republican appointed justices did the evil deed. Republicans gave us Roe w. Wade, the exact same way that a republican appointed justice gave us ObamaCare.

[Flash Bazbeaux]

Joe Kennedy went to, and graduated, from Harvard University around 1909. At that time Harvard was all East Coast Establishment, and East Coast Establishment was all Republican. Kennedy started shmoozing the sons of the Establishment as soon as he landed at Harvard. Kennedy was ambitious, and wanted to rub shoulders with the East Coast Establishment as an equal. His purpose in becoming involved in politics was not ideological, it was practical — to get ahead.

The Republican Establishment was not interested in rubbing shoulders with an Irish upstart, according to the book I read.

[nathanbedford]

Suggest you drop Ira Stoll a line and tell him all the research he did about JFK is just a bunch of lying nonsense. He should be impressed.

It's bad enough I feel honor bound to defend what I say, however, I feel no compulsion to defend what I do not say. I am not aware that I commented on Wizard White. If you think I did, please quote me the passage.

If you think I did state something in error-a matter which can readily be determined by reading what I actually wrote in my reply-I would be grateful if you could instruct me.

[ansel12]

JFK was an incompetent president and a liberal, today he would be a more modern version of the liberal that he was in his own day, his being elected killed America.

Democrats wrote a law to replace the American voter.

From unionizing government, to Vietnam, to the 1965 Immigration Act, JFK was the end of us.

“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s. In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”

[Sam Gamgee]

Didn't JFK direct the FBI to spy on non-criminal US citizens, like MLK?

[nathanbedford]

Whizzer White

[NKP_Vet]

Only thing I am saying is research into Kennedy’s politics prove him to be as conservative or more conservative as today’s RINOs. And if he were still around I seriously doubt he would be in the democrat party. And I mentioned Bryon White because Kennedy appointed him to the Supreme Court. A president appoints someone that they think has the same political philosophy. He did not vote with the majority on Roe v. Wade and he turned into a reliable conservative vote during his years on the court. In turn the no-nothing Bill Clinton appointed the left-wing radical Ruth Bader-Gingsburg to replace him.

[NKP_Vet]

“JFK was an incompetent president and a liberal, today he would be a more modern version of the liberal that he was in his own day, his being elected killed America”.

Same request for you. How about writing Ira Stoll and tell him all his research on Kennedy is all wrong. He was a crazy left-wing, anti-God, baby murdering, union-loving liberal of the first degree. Hell, do one better than that, write a book about how “liberal” JFK. Truth of the matter is republicans were the anti-war, pro-abortion party 60 years ago and absolute fact is they gave us Roe v. Wade and ObamaCare. Prescott Bush, the grandpa of little george, did business with Hitler and was the first secretary of the baby killing mill Planned Parenthood.