Yes, Virginia, JFK was a liberal

After demonizing JFK for decades, now they want to welcome him as their own?

Over the Nov. 22 weekend, many republicans have expressed the belief that JFK was a conservative. One person even said that he would have been a classic member of the tea party. 

Yikes! What have they been reading? Or drinking?

If only they could have known John F. Kennedy as we knew him. I have spent the last 15 years reading many biographies of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his family. Believe me, no one would ever believe that he was a conservative.

When he flew into Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the president knew that he was flying into an area in which many people hated him. After all, he was there to mediate a battle between liberal and conservative Democrats in Texas. {Today no such liberals can be found in that state.)

In fact, Texans called him a communist, a socialist, a person who is spending money like a drunken sailor. A full-page newspaper ad on Nov. 22 charged him with treason. 

Sound a little like 2013?

The John Birch Society dominated the conservative thinking in Texas, and right-wing Protestant clerics there hated the president, saying that Catholics were not true Christians -- and that the Pope was ultimately going to rule in D.C. 

The publisher of the Dallas Morning News told JFK to his face that he was gutless, according to Bill Minutaglio, a journalism professor at the University of Texas who wrote a book about the assassination, November 1963. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tea-party-has-roots-in-the-dallas-of-1963/2013/11/20/9cb59b4c-3cf4-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html>

The critics of Barack Obama today are making statements like the right-wingers in the South were in 1963. However, JFK said that if he could pass national health legislation, he would do so. 

I remember sitting at lunch with a Catholic who was a graduate student when I was at Villanova. He said that "the day that Kennedy was assassinated was the happiest day in my life."

This was a Catholic? He was from Florida, so that could be one reason that he felt that way. He listened to that tripe constantly, like those in Texas.

So, how can they argue that JFK was a conservative? The right wing, particularly in the South, hated him. 

To place this into perspective, read what JFK said to the New York Liberal Party in 1960: 

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal?' If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.' "

He was a tea partier? Are the TP's in favor of civil rights? No. In favor of civil liberties? No. In favor of health care? No. In favor of federal aid to education? No. Willing to spend money to help those who are laid off from work? No. 

You get the drift.

What the conservatives are looking at is something specific. JFK favored a one-time tax cut to invigorate the economy which was lagging in the early 60s. That proves that he is a conservative?

No.

The conservatives are pointing to one other facet of the Kennedy success. The one area in which JFK excelled was in relations with the Soviet Union. He was tough with the Berlin blockade, but the greatest victory of the Cold War occurred in 1962: He forced the USSR to back down in the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was a huge victory for the United States.

Now, conservatives are claiming that those actions made him a Republican conservative. If you study the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the members of the National Security Council sound just like the duo of Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham who are advocating bombing Syria -- or anyone else. These repubs who dragged us into Iraq want war, war war. 

In reality, the repubs since Vietman have been simply a blank check for the Pentagon. They believe that they have been strong on national security. 

History tells otherwise. 

The right wingers like Gen. Curtis Lemay, leader of the Air Force during the Cuban Missile Crisis, told JFK that he had "no guts" in using a blockade to bring Nikita Kruschev to his knees:  "This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich." This referred to Great Britain Prime Minister Chamberlain who had caved to Adolph Hitler there, and LeMay was digging JFK because the president's father, Joseph Kennedy, also opposed entering World War II. 

The leaders of the National Security Council were in favoring of bombing Cuba off the map, of using nuclear weapons against a country that is just 90 miles from the U.S.

JFK had a spine of steel, holding off the uniformed military who reflected the vision of the right wing at that time -- and so today. 

In fact, the repub belief that they were tough on national security would be news to FDR. If you go back to World War II, the republicans were isolationists and prevented President Roosevelt from doing anything to stop Hitler until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Yes, two liberal Democrats won World War I (Woodrow Wilson) and World War II (FDR) -- and a liberal Democrat won the greatest victory of the Cold War.

As for JFK being tough in foreign policy, he was, despite his uncertainly of what to do about Vietnam. Some historians have said that if he had lived, JFK would have withdrawn from South Vietnam after he won reelection in 1964. The conservatives wanted to remain in Vietnam. They were that "tough" party, but they lost two major wars: Vietnam (Richard Nixon) and Iraq (GW Bush).

One misconception of conservatives today occur because JFK had to toe a tough line because he had so many southern conservatives were in his party, generally from the South. That ended during the Sixties when LBJ and the Democrats passed Civil Rights legislation. Richard Nixon used his "Southern Strategy" to change the parties forever. Those who hated treating Blacks are equal human beings were permanently on the right side of the spectrum.

JFK also led the U.S. effort to reach the moon, something done by NASA after he died. That was not the policy of a conservative.

So, sorry, conservatives and repubs, JFK was not even close to republican values, or close to being a conservative. 

Nice try, though.