[mrustow]

For all of JFK's feet of clay, he hit the right notes for the time with this speech.

I am not sure why people bash JFK so much. He was a tax cutter (and for the rich no less). He was an anti-communist. He did protect our borders. And his speech was pretty good and wasn't filled with promises of a bunch of government handouts. JFK was more Republican than many Rinos of today.

My impression from the historical record, is that Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon were political twins. One was a moderate, pragmatic, anti-communist, and the other was a ... moderate, pragmatic anti-communist.

(In practice, Nixon moved to the left of Kennedy, with wage and price controls, but that was given a socialist post-Kennedy history under which Kennedy might have done the same. However, it's fairer to Kennedy to say that Nixon did move to Kennedy's left on domestic policy.)

[BluesDuke]

My impression from the historical record, is that Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon were political twins. One was a moderate, pragmatic, anti-communist, and the other was a ... moderate, pragmatic anti-communist.

So, in fact, might Joseph McCarthy have been classified. Outside the Communist question, McCarthy frequently enough took positions on domestic policy that would probably get him denounced as a RINO in other times and places. (In fact, McCarthy before the infamous Wheeling speech that launched him across the national radar seems to have had a reputation as one of the more moderate-to-liberal of Republican lawmakers...)